Low-level nuclear power plant outages in the United States can lead to unanticipated costs, potentially compromising the expected operation lifetime of the plant. Nuclear power plants are complex systems of interfacing components and highly regulated processes. This inherent complexity makes predicting outages from system dependencies very challenging. When outages do...
Liquid sodium is a challenging fluid to perform verification and validation for. Its chemical reactivity, large thermal conductivity, and opacity make both modeling and experimental data gathering difficult. Converting the wire wraps of liquid sodium reactor fuel pin geometry into capillaries, and inserting fiber optic temperature sensors, promises to capture...
The collective understanding of the critical heat flux phenomenon is crucial to the safety and operational power limits of every nuclear and petrochemical power plant in the world. To define the maximum heat transfer capability in the postulated reactivity-initiated accident in a nuclear reactor, the mechanisms that trigger the departure...
In the most challenging nuclear power plant accidents, transient critical heat flux (CHF) is a primary phenomenon that drives peak cladding temperature and ultimately fuel failure. It is not yet determined whether the use of steady-state CHF methods can accurately predict transient CHF under the conditions of a blowdown due...
Among the candidates for the next generation of nuclear power plant is the high temperature gas reactor (HTGR). Since the HTGR does not have the same operational history as water cooled reactors do in the United States, investigation into the response of different accident phenomena is still an active area...
Nanoscale Instrumented Indentation Testing (IIT) is a material characterization technique that is used to determine mechanical properties. The size effects present at this scale make it difficult to expand findings to a bulk scale. Modeling can be used to bridge this gap and better understand nanoscale IIT and the size...
The HENRI system was developed to narrow the pulse width of TREAT from 89 ms to below 60 ms with the goal of improving the test reactor's ability to simulate RIAs in LWRs by rapidly injecting helium-3, a strong neutron poison, into the core. A coupled model using the CFD...
A new approach is described that offers a risk-informed performance-based (RIPB) framework for quantifying the risk associated with a cyber-attack on a nuclear power generating facility.
The first part of the method involves 1) the creation of a simplified 10 CFR 73.54 compliant cyber infrastructure, 2) modeling of design basis...
This thesis presents a novel design for a rheometer style viscometer by implementing high temperature and inert atmospheric requirements on the device. The goals of this device are to measure the viscosity of high temperature molten salts, which are corrosive and extremely hydroscopic. It also aims to be able to...
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 dictates that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in conjunction with the Department of Energy (DOE) are responsible for the licensing and regulation safety strategies of the Very High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (VHTGR). The VHTGR is a next generation nuclear design that is capable of...