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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver 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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Latest News
Sam Altman steps down as Oklo board chair
Advanced nuclear company Oklo Inc. has new leadership for its board of directors as billionaire Sam Altman is stepping down from the position he has held since 2015. The move is meant to open new partnership opportunities with OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, and other artificial intelligence companies.
John Acierno, Elia Merzari, Logan Burnett, Yue Jin, Emilio Baglietto, Hangbok Choi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 7 | July 2024 | Pages 1223-1244
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2337367
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents the development of a benchmark for predicting thermal striping through simulation. This work utilized large eddy simulation and will be used to benchmark future models. The testing domain was created using both the STRUCT and the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes turbulence models and is based on an earlier design of the General Atomics Fast Modular Reactor upper plenum. The plenum features two adjacent, identical hexagonal bundles each with a center-placed axial rod drive, with a hot left coolant stream and a cold right coolant stream. The simulation solves the nondimensional Navier-Stokes equations, with temperature accounted as a passive scalar. First- and second-order flow statistics were obtained after 600 convective time units of averaging. The first-order statistics reveal that the hot jet is damped by a recirculatory flow from the near wall. At the same location, the second-order statistics show strong oscillations both in velocity and temperature. The power spectral density was utilized to determine that a low-frequency oscillation occurs here that is within the range of interest for thermal striping. Furthermore, proper orthogonal decomposition was used to identify coherent structures that confirm the oscillatory behavior, indicative of thermal striping. Overall, this benchmark can aid in the development of future models for predicting thermal striping in nuclear reactors, potentially leading to improved reactor safety and performance.