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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Zhen Wang, Jonny Rutqvist, Yuan Wang, Colin Leung, Andrew Hoch, Ying Dai
Nuclear Technology | Volume 187 | Number 2 | August 2014 | Pages 158-168
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-76
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present an extended multiple interacting continua (Ex-MINC) model of fractured rock masses that uses Oda's crack tensor theory to upscale the hydraulic and mechanical properties. The Ex-MINC concept includes separate connected continua representing active fractures, inactive fractures, and matrix to represent the fracture-matrix system. The crack tensor theory was used to calculate the stress-dependent permeability tensor and compliance tensor for individual grid blocks. By doing this, we transformed a discrete fracture network model into a grid-based continuum model. The Ex-MINC model was verified against an existing analytical solution, and the entire Ex-MINC/crack tensor model approach was applied to a benchmark test (BMT) related to coupled stress, fluid flow, and transport through a 20-×20-m model domain of heavily fractured media. This BMT was part of the international DECOVALEX project for the development of coupled models and their validation, thus providing us with the opportunity to compare our results with the results of independent models. We conducted the coupled hydraulic and mechanical modeling with TOUGH-FLAC, a simulator based on the TOUGH2 multiphase flow code and the FLAC3D geomechanical code. The results of our simulations were generally consistent with the results of the other independent modeling approaches and showed how inactive fractures impeded solute transport through the fractured system by providing an additional fracture surface area as an avenue for increasing fracture matrix diffusion.