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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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August 2025
Latest News
House E&C members question the DOE
As work progresses on the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, which will progress through DOE authorization rather than Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, three members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce have sent a critical letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The letter demands “information about the DOE and its employees’ dealings with the NRC and its staff” and expresses concern that DOE staff has “broken the firewall” between the departments.
Jadyn Reis, Yassin Hassan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 9 | September 2025 | Pages 2135-2144
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2025.2480974
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The high Prandtl number of molten salt provides unique flow characteristics that must be well studied in natural circulation loops to ensure the efficiency of passive safety systems in advanced reactor designs. Closure models used in reduced-order modeling, such as the System Analysis Module (SAM) code, were developed with traditional heat transfer fluids and must be validated for use in molten salt. A natural circulation loop was modeled in SAM based on an experimental facility at Texas A&M University. Four experimental data sets were obtained for each working fluid, water and salt, at increasing heater power. A one-dimensional fluid flow model was used with input parameters for the net heat input to the system and minimum temperature in the loop. Steady-state results were found for each test case using the default friction factor in SAM and the friction factor found from experimental results. The temperature difference and velocity in the loop were used for validation efforts. It was found that the experimental friction factor was less than the friction factor calculated in SAM. As a result, the experimental friction factor improved the accuracy of the model in predicting the velocity in the loop. The results for the temperature difference in water were found to be statistically the same as the results in the experimental data. In the salt cases, the temperature difference was better predicted as the Prandtl number decreased. It was found that at high velocities and high Prandtl numbers, the development of the flow field was significant and deviated from the simulation results.