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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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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May 2025
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.
Joel Serge Guidez (CEA), Andrei Rineiski (KIT), Gérard Prêle, Enrico Girardi (EdF), Janos Bodi, Konstantin Mikityuk (PSI)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 26-35
Following the previous European projects EFR and CP ESFR [1], a new Horizon-2020 project, called ESFR-SMART, was launched in September 2017 [2]. This project will consider the safety objectives envisaged for Generation-IV reactors and the update of European and international safety frameworks, taking into account the Fukushima accident. In accordance with these objectives, guidelines will be defined to drive ESFR-SMART developments, mainly simplifying the design and using all the positive features of the Sodium Fast Reactors (SFR), such as low coolant pressure; efficiency of natural convection; possibility of decay heat removal (DHR) by atmospheric air; high thermal inertia and long grace period before a human intervention is needed. In this paper, the safety objectives are presented in terms of defence-in-depth principle, extreme natural hazards to take into account, mitigation measures, etc. In this R&D framework, a set of new ambitious safety measures is introduced for further evaluation within the ESFR-SMART project. This proposed set aims at consistency with the main lines of safety evolutions since the Fukushima accident, but it does not yet constitute the final comprehensive safety analysis. This analysis will be done in the ESFR-SMART project to assess the relevance of the whole design in comparison to the final safety objectives. It should also be noted that some of these proposals are useful but could be replaced by other proposals in case of non-final validation. This first reassembly leads to a simplified reactor, forgiving and including a lot of passivity. This first version will be reinforced by the various tasks works in the forthcoming months.