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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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OECD NEA meeting focuses on irradiation experiments
Members of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s Second Framework for Irradiation Experiments (FIDES-II) joint undertaking gathered from September 29 to October 3 in Ketchum, Idaho, for the technical advisory group and governing board meetings hosted by Idaho National Laboratory. The FIDES-II Framework aims to ensure and foster competences in experimental nuclear fuel and structural materials in-reactor experiments through a diverse set of Joint Experimental Programs (JEEPs).
Dov Ingman, Leib Reznik
Nuclear Technology | Volume 74 | Number 3 | September 1986 | Pages 243-259
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT86-A33827
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A multicomponent system, specified by a high level of power generation and transformation as a thermodynamics system with strong interaction between the elements, is considered in the reliability analysis. The reliability of each system element is dependent on the average energy of the system. The approach, which aims to give proper consideration to the system / element interaction, is based on the energy accumulation aspects of various processes of the element and the system deterioration. The phenomena of coherent blockages of core coolant channels for different geometrical configurations serve to demonstrate that there exists, in principle, a possibility of failure of the system through cooperative failures of its elements. The investigation is based on statistical thermodynamics, particularly on the approach of “phase transitions,” and also on the percolation theory results. The developed model has been employed to evaluate the propagation rate of the subchannel blockages under critical conditions. In spite of the simplified character of the model, it has demonstrated the necessity of including consideration of collective phenomena in the reliability analysis of multicomponent systems characterized by a high power level. The developed approach permits construction of a minimum set of generalized system parameters that describe the critical system behavior. A quantitative determination of these parameters and an application of the model to specific reactor core designs and severe transient scenarios will be the subject of further investigation.