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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Powering the future: How the DOE is fueling nuclear fuel cycle research and development
As global interest in nuclear energy surges, the United States must remain at the forefront of research and development to ensure national energy security, advance nuclear technologies, and promote international cooperation on safety and nonproliferation. A crucial step in achieving this is analyzing how funding and resources are allocated to better understand how to direct future research and development. The Department of Energy has spearheaded this effort by funding hundreds of research projects across the country through the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP). This initiative has empowered dozens of universities to collaborate toward a nuclear-friendly future.
Jinyong Feng (MIT), Tarek Frahi (Institut National des Sciences et Techniques Nucléaires), Emilio Baglietto (MIT)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 341-350
Turbulent mixing of different temperature fluids in T-junction geometries is a technically critical issue for the safe operation of power plants. Due to the strong flow deformation, the scale separation assumption is not respected locally, limiting the applicability of classic unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) models, which are unable to deliver the required accuracy in the prediction of temperature fluctuations. On the contrary, eddy resolving methods, and in particular large eddy simulation (LES), can provide reliable results at a computational cost that is still impracticable for the industry.
A robust second-generation URANS (2G-URANS) model was recently proposed at MIT, which aims at locally resolving complex flow structures. In the present paper, the performance of the structure-based (STRUCT) model is assessed specifically against low Reynolds number (??????=4,485) DNS data on a T-junction case. Velocity and temperature distributions in the mixing region are compared between URANS, STRUCT and LES solutions and the reference DNS data. The STRUCT model demonstrates significant advancement in the ability to model the thermal striping phenomena. Its application produces accurate predictions of the flow behavior on coarse URANS computational grids, with a large cost saving in comparison to LES.