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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
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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June 2025
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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
Hongchao Sun, Yiren Lian, Guoqiang Li, Lei Chen, Dongyuan Meng, Shutang Sun, Dajie Zhuang, Jiangang Zhang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 1 | January 2025 | Pages 32-38
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2312723
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fire accident is one typical postulated accident in a nuclear fuel cycling facility. Safety-related data on a combustible fire are necessary to evaluate the safety of nuclear fuel cycling facilities under fire accident conditions quantitatively. Accurate and reliable data should be obtained by performing some demonstration tests.
This study deals with the ignition and combustion characteristics of solvent involved at a nuclear fuel cycling facility and the fire behavior during a solvent fire. Small-scale and large-scale tests were conducted at the China Institute for Radiation Protection. The minimum ignition energy of the solvent under different temperatures was obtained. The test data were used to judge the possibility that the organic solvent ignited by a spark. Parameters such as combustion rate, smoke gas, aerosol release of solvent combustion, temperature distribution, and pressure change in the solvent fire cell were also obtained. The test results can be used as conservative estimates of the amount of aerosol release during a solvent fire. The experimental data also can be used to develop preventive and mitigation measures for solvent fire accidents. This paper puts forward information based on the experimental data and the recent international study.
