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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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Jeffrey King guides new nuclear program at Tennessee Tech
Jeffrey King
In August, the College of Engineering at Tennessee Technological University welcomed ANS member Jeffrey C. King as the founding director of its new nuclear engineering program. King, a leading force within the American Nuclear Society and a space enthusiast, is tasked with developing a new Department of Nuclear Engineering at Tennessee Tech after a more than 20-year absence of such a program at the university.
King comes to Tennessee Tech from the Colorado School of Mines, where he had been a professor of metallurgical and materials engineering for 15 years, leading the development of the nuclear science and engineering program and serving as director of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Research Center.
Xiong Gao, Jamie B. Coble, A. C. Hines, Belle R. Upadhyaya, J. Wesley Hines
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 11 | November 2021 | Pages 1725-1745
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1831873
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear power plants (NPPs) require accurate measurement of mass flow rates. Advanced flowmeters have been widely applied in several current industries; however, the operating environment in NPPs is especially harsh because of high temperature, high radiation, and extremely corrosive conditions. Several of the advanced reactor designs, such as liquid sodium pool reactors and integral small modular reactors, do not have conventional primary piping systems. These designs require an alternative method to accurately measure primary flow. Cross-correlation function (CCF) flow estimation can estimate the flow velocity indirectly without any specific instruments for flow measurement. The target flow rate is derived by the delay time between two sensors located near each other along the flow direction. Temperature sensors are a common choice for this function because they are reliable, economical, and widely used in various industries. The delay time is inferred by applying the CCF to the signals collected from two or more sensors. CCF flow estimation can be performed in any structure of the flow region, not limited to pipes. One challenge for the CCF flow estimation is that the accuracy of the flow measurement is mainly determined by the inherent local process variation, which is small compared to the uncorrelated noise. To differentiate the process variations from the uncorrelated noise, this paper demonstrates periodic fluid injection of a different temperature before the sensors to amplify common process variation. The feasibility and accuracy of this method have been investigated through a physical flow loop experiment designed to verify the CCF flow estimation using fluid injection. Several parameters must be selected when designing the fluid injection CCF measurement system, such as the distance between the fluid injection site and the sensors, the injection period, and the injection flow rate. A series of tests was conducted to investigate whether these parameters were related to the accuracy of the CCF flow estimation and to identify appropriate values for these parameters for different flow regimes. The results show that the fluid injection method improves the flow measurement performance, and the appropriate design of flow injection and measurement geometry produces better flow characterization performance over a range of flow rates.