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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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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Christophe Journeau, Laurence Aufore, Léonie Berge, Claude Brayer, Nathalie Cassiaut-Louis, Nicolas Estre, Frédéric Payot, Pascal Piluso, Jean-Christophe Prele, Shifali Singh, Magali Zabiégo, Eric Pluyette, Frédéric Serre, Béatrice Teisseire
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 239-247
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1479580
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fuel-coolant interaction (FCI) is an important issue for the assessment of severe accident safety for both sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) and pressurized water reactors (PWRs). For the ASTRID SFR demonstrator, FCI is a key phenomenon affecting the relocation of molten fuel in engineered discharge tubes between the core region and the core catcher plenum. FCI controls jet fragmentation and debris bed formation and raises the issue of potentially energetic vapor explosions in the ASTRID lower head. In this frame, experimental data will be necessary to validate SCONE, the fuel-sodium interaction code under development at CEA. For PWRs, one of the configurations of interest lies within the residual case where in-vessel retention would fail. In this case, it is expected that a light metallic layer would be the first to interact with water, before a heavier oxide melt discharge. Here, steam explosion and debris bed formation are the two major points of interest. Based on the experimental expertise gained from the KROTOS facility and its X-ray radioscopic imaging system, new test facilities have been designed to carry out prototypic (depleted uranium–containing) corium interactions with either sodium or water in PLINIUS2, the CEA future large-mass experimental platform dealing with masses above 100 kg. Some test sections have been specially designed to ensure proper visualization of the fuel, liquid coolant, and vapor phases by an improved X-Ray imaging system. This paper presents the future PLINIUS 2 platform as well as the experimental programs foreseen to study both water-corium and sodium-corium interactions.