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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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.
Andrew Greenop, Jae Keun Choi, Bryant Phan, Per F. Peterson (Univ of California, Berkeley)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 825-834
Coiled-Tube Gas Heaters (CTGHs) are shell-and-tube heat exchangers that incorporate small coiled tubes with a gas (supercritical CO2 or air) flowing radially through the tube bundle cooling the liquid inside the tubes. This design reduces the overall volume of the tube bundle while maximizing the heat transfer surface area, improves the effectiveness of the heater, and allows for large pressure differentials between the two heat transfer fluids. CTGHs are optimal for use as the primary heat exchanger in small modular reactors, such as SFRs and FHRs. In a previous paper, a design and optimization code, called THEEM, was developed to model CTGHs using non-dimensional heat transfer and fluid data. In order to experimentally validate this code, the Coiled-tube Air-heater Separate Effects Test (CASET) experiment was built. CASET consists of a single CTGH sub-bundle in an acrylic vessel that uses room temperature air to cool hot water in the bundle. The initial validation experiments indicate that THEEM can accurately predict the temperatures and heat exchanger effectiveness, but the pressure drop calculations may need to be reevaluated. CASET was also used to measure the distribution of the air flowing through the bundle, which could then be used to improve THEEM in the future. Finally, the Wilson plot method was used to develop heat transfer convection correlations for both the shell-side and tube-side fluids, which could have applications to other coiled tube heat exchangers.