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Division Spotlight
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
INL’s new innovation incubator could link start-ups with an industry sponsor
Idaho National Laboratory is looking for a sponsor to invest $5 million–$10 million in a privately funded innovation incubator to support seed-stage start-ups working in nuclear energy, integrated energy systems, cybersecurity, or advanced materials. For their investment, the sponsor gets access to what INL calls “a turnkey source of cutting-edge American innovation.” Not only are technologies supported by the program “substantially de-risked” by going through technical review and development at a national laboratory, but the arrangement “adds credibility, goodwill, and visibility to the private sector sponsor’s investments,” according to INL.
Mark P. Paulsen, John G. Shatford, John L. Westacott, Lance J. Agee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 100 | Number 2 | November 1992 | Pages 162-173
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34739
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Boiling water reactors (BWRs) are susceptible to thermal-hydraulic instabilities that must be considered in BWR design and operation. Early BWRs were designed to be very stable while operating under natural-circulation conditions. As reactor designs have been modified, stability margins have been reduced, and the potential for stability events, such as occurred at the La Salle and Vermont Yankee plants, has increased. These events and other considerations point to the need for a reliable analysis tool for predicting the dynamic behavior of these events. Transient thermal-hydraulic systems analysis codes have been used to analyze hydrodynamic instabilities, and although the results are often reasonable and exhibit the expected behavior, they are sensitive to changes in node and time-step size, and a converged solution cannot be demonstrated by reducing the node and time-step sizes. This sensitivity is due to numerical diffusion that limits the use of most time domain system analysis codes for BWR stability analyses since it directly affects the decay (or growth) ratio computed for stability events. A conservation equation transport model using the method of characteristics has been developed for use with the RETRAN-03 mixture energy and vapor continuity equations. The model eliminates numerical diffusion in the RETRAN solution. The development and validation of a conservation equation transport model for the RETRAN-03 time domain thermal-hydraulic analysis code that extends the range of application to simulating the dynamic behavior of stability events are presented. RETRAN-03 analyses are presented that compare simulations of hydrodynamic instability events with data.