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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Benjamin E. Harvey (Univ of Birmingham), Lindsay McMillan (Univ of Birmingham/Mott MacDonald), Alan W. Herbert (Univ of Birmingham)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 273-280
Colloids can potentially enhance the transport of radionuclides in groundwater, meaning radionuclides could travel further than would normally be predicted by solute-only transport modelling. To develop understanding, potential radionuclide transport processes are investigated. Colloid-Facilitated Radionuclide Transport is investigated as part of the Colloid Formation and Migration (CFM) experiment at the Grimsel Test Site in Switzerland, where in-situ migration experiments have investigated the transport of tracers, bentonite colloids and radionuclides at a variety of flow velocities in a shear zone within fractured granodiorite.
This paper presents a transport model that aims to replicate the transport of tracers, colloids and americium in two different experiments using consistent parameters. Inverse modelling has been used to describe the hydraulic properties of the shear zone. Flexible transport equations are then used to simulate contaminant transport. The model is able to replicate the breakthrough curves for colloids and americium across two experiments with different dipole flow fields using consistent parameters. The parameter values used to describe colloid attachment and americium desorption are within the ranges used by other models in the CFM programme, but are different to ones generated by laboratory desorption experiments. It is planned to extend the model to other radionuclides in the future.
