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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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.
Edouard Hourcade (CEA), Takatsugu Mihara (JAEA), , Alexandre Dauphin, Jean-François Dirat (Framatome), Akihiro Ide (MFBR)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 556-561
ASTRID (Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration) has the objective to integrate innovative options with the objective to prepare the 4th generation reactors.
In this framework a French-Japanese agreement was signed in 2014 between CEA, framatome (ex AREVA NP), JAEA, MHI/MFBR to jointly perform components design of ASTRID such as Decay Heat Removal Systems (DHRS).
In this respect an ambitious close collaboration is set in the framework of the practical elimination objective of Decay Heat Removal (DHR) function loss which is one of the main ASTRID safety objectives.
To reach this target, design is driven by deterministic safety criteria, probabilistic safety indicators and proper technical and economic analysis.
Safety demonstration aims at identifying common cause failures and imposes to search for proper diversification of decay heat removal systems. In ASTRID, DHRS main diversification is based on final heat sinks types and intermediate coolant fluids. It is also based on spatial segregation of systems which leads to thermal loading diversification during normal operation as well as severe accident exposure. Implication of two different designers bodies framatome and a Japanese team (JAEA, Mitsubishi FBR Systems (MFBR) and MHI) also participate to diversification.
This paper is giving an update concerning ASTRID DHR strategy with description of reference architecture evolution and project objectives. In particular, new developments were made for DHR during normal shutdown and role of Ex-Vessel system. A special focus is made on design process of automatic shutter to hydraulically connect Hot Plenum and cold plenum to enhance primary vessel natural convection.
