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Division Spotlight
Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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.
Austin Fleming, Ahmad Al-Rashdan, Colby Jensen, Pattrick Calderoni (INL)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1150-1153
Fuel-cladding interaction for pressurized water reactors is of interest to the nuclear energy community because of its impact on fuel safety and performance. The complex behavior of fuel-cladding mechanical interaction can result in diameter changes of the cladding. These can be due to internal pressure changes due to fission gas release or fuel pressing directly on the cladding due to fuel swelling. Regardless of the cause of diameter changes, an accurate diameter measurement of the cladding can provide detailed information about the conditions of the fuel and cladding. Other efforts have been made to perform cladding diameter measurements, but contact method have been used with limited applicability to many tests [1]. Electrical impedance based instrumentation is class of measurements that is based on “interrogating” a sensor by providing a current and measuring the voltage (or vise versa) across a system. The parameter of interest is determined by relating it to the measured impedance (calculated from the current and voltage) through the use of an analytic, empirical, or numerical model. These systems are used for a wide variety of measurands in the nuclear industry. They are attractive for in-pile applications because of the potential to be robust to irradiation.