Medical Isotopes are a necessity in modern medicine for cancer treatments and medical imaging. In order to ensure that the needs and demands are met for the medical procedures, facilities are put in place to produce these isotopes. There are over 25 different isotopes of interest being produced by more...
This project was a proof of concept of the use of the RAVEN software, a tool developed for the Risk Informed Safety Margin Characterization (RISMC) approach, with RELAP5-3D. This novel approach combines older probabilistic and mechanistic approaches to look at how and why the complex systems of a nuclear power...
Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) designs have received renewed interest due to their superior thermal efficiencies and a rehabilitated desire for space exploration. This has resulted in improved NTR fuel designs that have unique properties that require investigation and testing in order to be more safely designed and operated.
Oak Ridge...
Lattice bum-up calculations in thermal reactors are complicated by the necessity
for use of transport theory to represent fuel rods, control rods, and burnable absorbers,
by many time-dependent variables which must be considered in the analysis, and by
geometric complexity which introduces time-dependent, spatial-spectral variations.
Representation of lattice structure in...
Safety concerns at the Hanford Reservation require a way to measure the
moisture content of material contained in the high level radioactive waste tanks. The
freezing of material next to a probe was proposed by scientists at Pacific Northwest
Laboratories (PNL) as one approach to solve this problem. It was...
Five Ultra light Fabric Reflux Tubes (UFRTs) were tested in a thermal vacuum chamber at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Johnson Space Center in September 1994. These test articles were design and fabricated by staff at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the United States...
A rotating, flat plate condensation experiment has been developed to
investigate the heat of the Rotating Bubble Membrane Radiator (RBMR). The
RBMR is a proposed heat rejection system for space applications which uses
working fluid condensation on the inside surface of a rotating sphere to
reject heat to space. The...
A Fabric Composite Radiation Heat Transfer Study has been
conducted to determine the effective emissivities of specific
fabric composite materials. The weave of the fabric and the
high strength capability of the individual fiber in
combination with the thermal conductivity and chemical
stability of specific metallic liner, result in a...
Conventional stainless steel - water and ceramic fabric composite water
heat pipes have been built and tested. The tests have been conducted to compare
the performance characteristics between conventional and fabric composite heat
pipe radiators for space nuclear power heat rejection systems. The fabric
composite concept combines a strong ceramic...