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Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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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
L. E. Herranz, F. Sánchez, S. Gupta
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 10 | October 2023 | Pages 1523-1536
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2122679
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The removal of aerosol particles and vapors in gas bubbles moving through a water pool is known to be an efficient means to reduce source term to the environment during severe accidents, as happened in Fukushima Daiichi. This trapping, called pool scrubbing, entails a complex phenomenology in which hydrodynamics, thermal hydraulics, and aerosol physics strongly affect each other and determine the net transfer of radioactivity coming out from the aqueous pond. More than 20 experimental programs have addressed this issue since the early 1980s, but few of them did it in a systematic and representative way. This paper thoroughly reviews the entire pool scrubbing database until 2016 and assesses the adequacy of the experimental setup, representativeness of boundary conditions, weaknesses in decontamination factor derivation, data uncertainties, and some other aspects to finally synthesize a reduced number of experiments that could be used as an experimental matrix for the validation of pool scrubbing models. More than 500 tests were reviewed and classified as Qualified for Validation, Useful for Understanding, or Not Useful; less than 15% of these experiments are considered in the proposed validation matrix due to different reasons. Major insights and remaining needs are also highlighted. This work was conducted under the framework of the Integration of Pool Scrubbing Research to Enhance Source-Term Calculations, or the IPRESCA project, led by Becker Technologies, in the framework of the Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technology Platform/Nuclear Generation II & III Alliance/Technical Area 2.