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Who’s in the running for DOE Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses?
Today is the Department of Energy’s deadline for states to respond to a request for information on proposed Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. Issued on January 28, the RFI marks the first step toward potentially establishing voluntary federal-state partnerships designed to build a coherent, end-to-end nuclear fuel cycle strategy for the country, including waste management, according to the DOE.
James Schneider, Mark Anderson (Univ of Wisconsin, Madison), Emilio Baglietto (MIT), Sama Bilbao y Leon (Virginia Commonwealth Univ), Matthew D. Bucknor (ANL), Sarah Morgan (Virginia Commonwealth Univ), Matthew Weathered (ANL), Liangyu Xu (MIT)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 642-649
The sodium fast reactor (SFR) is the most mature reactor concept of all the generation-IV nuclear systems and is a promising reactor design that is currently under development by several organizations. The majority of sodium fast reactor designs utilize a pool type arrangement which incorporates the primary coolant pumps and intermediate heat exchangers within the sodium pool. These components typically protrude into the pool thus reducing the risk and severity of a loss of coolant accidents. To further ensure safe operation under even the most severe transients a more comprehensive understanding of key thermal hydraulic phenomena in this pool is desired. One of the key technology gaps identified for SFR safety is determining the extent and the effects of thermal stratification developing in the pool during postulated accident scenarios such as a protected or unprotected loss of flow incident. In an effort to address these issues, detailed flow models of transient stratification in the pool during an accident can be developed. However, to develop the calculation models, and ensure they can reproduce the underlying physics, highly spatially resolved data is needed. This data can be used in conjunction with advanced computational fluid dynamic calculations to aid in the development of simple reduced dimensional models for systems codes such as SAM and SAS4A/SASSYS-1.