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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.
Jun-Yi Zhang, Xiao Yan (CNNC Key Laboratory on Reactor Thermal Hydraulics Technology), Ze-Jun Xiao (Hualong Pressurized Water Reactor Technology Corporation, Ltd.), Yong-Ze Xu (CD-adapco)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1134-1143
Subcooled boiling heat transfer, which is related to Departure of Nucleate Boiling(DNB), is highly concerned in fuel assembly of PWR. It is of importance and significance to predict void fraction and mass/energy transfer characteristics among sub-channels under subcooled boiling with 3-D CFD code to obtain more details for better understanding of two-phase flow process in rod bundle. To better understand and predict void distribution and its transportation characteristics in rod bundle, two-phase flow simulation with two-fluid model was carried out with Heat Partitioning Model. In this study, the 5×5 full length PSBT rod bundle with Uniform-Axial Power Distribution (U-APD) was used under prototype condition (test serial of B5 configuration) to test the physical method. The parameter distribution in axial and radial orientation among different sub-channels at the downstream of the last Mixing Vane Grid(MVG), where the DNB occurs at the end of the heated section, was studied. Different void fraction distribution was observed among central channels, side channels and corner channels. It is induced by different mass transfer process results from the layout of mixing vanes. Moreover, different mass transfer characteristics occurred between corner channels at the different location. Energy transfer is related to the mass transfer among sub-channels. The simple support grid (SSG) shows a suppression of radial transverse flow which is introduced by the mixing vanes for heat transfer enhancement.