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Reimagining nuclear materials for the future of medicine
Nuclear medicine has come a long way since Henri Becquerel first observed the penetrating energy of radioactive materials in 1896. Today, technetium-99m alone is used in more than 40 million diagnostic procedures every year—from cardiovascular imaging and bone scans to cancer detection—making it the undisputed workhorse of nuclear medicine. That single statistic tells you something important: An enormous portion of modern diagnostic medicine rests on a surprisingly narrow foundation, one built around a small number of aging research reactors that were never originally designed for continuous isotope production.
Taku Nagatake, Yasuo Koizumi, Mitsuhiko Shibata, Hiroyuki Yoshida, Yoshiyuki Nemoto, Yoshiyuki Kaji (JAEA)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 414-420
In the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident, loss of cooling capabilities for spent fuel pool (SFP) occurred. As a result, a water level of the SFP decreased and it was concerned that the spent fuels were damaged. In one of the safety measures for the SFP, a portable spray system is considered as a device to cool the spent fuels.
In this research, the numerical simulation method for evaluating the capability of spray cooling has been developed. To develop this method, we mainly focus on the thermal-hydraulic behavior of two-phase flow generated by the spray cooling systems at the top and inside of the fuel assembly. And an experiment for validating the numerical simulation method also has been performed. In the experiment, by using the experimental apparatus with 5x5 bundle and in order to evaluate the counter current flow limiting (CCFL), visualization of two-phase flow behavior at the upper tie plate is performed and the liquid volume entering into the simulated fuel assembly is measured. In this paper, visualization results of CCFL and CCFL condition of the simulated upper tie plate, and visualization results of developed simulation code are reported.