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Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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
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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Gary R. Smolen, Raymond C. Lloyd, Tomozo Koyama
Nuclear Technology | Volume 107 | Number 3 | September 1994 | Pages 326-339
Technical Paper | Nuclear Criticality Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35011
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Critical experiments were performed at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory-Critical Mass Laboratory from 1985 to 1987 with mixed Pu+U nitrate solutions in annular geometry. The 25.4-cm-diam central region of the annular vessel contained various inserts, such as a bottle containing fissile solution and borated-concrete and cadmium-covered polyethylene annular inserts. The fissile solution concentrations ranged from 47 to 226g Pu/ℓ with Pu/Pu+U ratios of 1.0, 0.5, and 0.2. The criticality data were used to validate two versions of the SCALE computer code system (SCALE-4 and SCALE-2). The analyses were performed with the 27-energy-group cross-section library, derived from the Evaluated Nuclear Data File B-Version IV. Computer models were prepared to accurately simulate all significant materials that would affect the system reactivity. The average calculated keff for the 18 experiments was 1.008 (σ = 0.006) with SCALE-4 and 1.004 (σ = 0.006) with SCALE-2. Overall, the range of calculated keff’s varied from 0.990 to 1.017. The results of the validation calculations indicate that the SCALE computer code system is capable of accurately modeling Pu+U nitrate. solutions in annular geometry.