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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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May 2025
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.
Christian Petrie, Niyanth Sridharan (ORNL), Curtis Frederick, Travis McFalls, Sudarsanam Suresh Babu (Univ of Tennessee), Adam Hehr, Mark Norfolk (Fabrisonic LLC), John Sheridan (Sheridan Solutions LLC)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 459-468
Qualification and commercialization of new nuclear fuels and materials requires a comprehensive set of data regarding behavior under irradiation. There are currently very limited options for in-situ monitoring of material evolution during irradiation due to the extremely harsh environment (i.e., high temperatures and intense radiation) of materials test reactors. This paper describes work being performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to embed metal-coated fiber-optic sensors into in-core irradiation experiments to enable measurement of radial dimensional changes and spatially distributed temperature and strain. Some critical issues that must be addressed before embedded fiber optics can be deployed in-core include (1) embedding of metal-coated fibers without failure or prohibitively large signal attenuation, (2) embedding in curved channels to allow for radial dimensional measurements, and (3) demonstrating that embedded fibers can survive the large stresses that result from differential thermal expansion between the glass fiber and the surrounding metal matrix. This work shows how optical fibers have been successfully embedded in aluminum and copper alloys in both straight and curved channels with various bend radii. The embedded fibers have also survived heating to temperatures of 500°C and cooling to room temperature. This paper presents some of the experimental results including measured light attenuation resulting from embedding with and without bends and high-temperature testing.