ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
General Atomics announces breeding blanket test facility
General Atomics announced it is developing design concepts in collaboration with the Department of Energy for the Fusion Blanket Component Test Facility (BCTF), which will test full-scale breeding blankets.
“No one has tested a fusion blanket at this scale. While there are more research and development challenges ahead, a BCTF brings us closer to turning fusion from proven science into practical, sustainable power,” said Anantha Krishnan, senior vice president of the General Atomics Energy Group.
Nicolò Badodi, Antonio Cammi, Marica Eboli, Daniele Martelli, Alessandro Del Nevo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 10 | October 2023 | Pages 1508-1522
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2188984
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A major safety concern addressed during the design of the water-cooled lead-lithium (PbLi) breeding blanket (BB) is represented by an in-box loss-of-coolant accident, where high-pressure water is supposed to interact with PbLi inside the BB. Code development activities are being carried out to create the needed tools for the safety analysis of these systems in the case of incidental scenarios, which are supported by extensive experimental campaigns that aim at providing data for SIMMER code verification and validation (V&V). In this regard, the present work aims at presenting the dataset generated during the Series D experimental campaign performed at the LIFUS5/Mod3 facility operated at the ENEA Brasimone Research Centre. This is a separate effect facility able to simulate the mixing of water and PbLi alloy in conditions of temperature and pressure similar to the ones encountered by the system during nominal operation and to acquire significant data on all the relevant thermochemical parameters. Moreover, a preliminary analysis of the data has been performed to critically determine the quality of the data and to identify possible issues in the experimental process. In the end, the foreseen extension of the experimental work is described, as well as the foreseen application of the acquired data in the code V&V activities.