Space Nuclear Conference 2005 (SNC '05)

[Astronuc]

Embedded Topical Meeting at the 2005 ANS Annual Meeting
June 5 - 9, 2005 • Town & Country Hotel • San Diego, CA

Space Nuclear Conference 2005 (SNC '05) will be the first topical meeting organized by the Aerospace Nuclear Science and Technology (ANST) technical group. NASA funding has recently started to flow to research and development entities as Project Prometheus (formerly the Space Nuclear Initiative) has been established and funded to develop capabilities for unmanned and manned missions to Mars and beyond. The common technical opinion is that nuclear based power and propulsion technology will be necessary for successful missions of these types.

The primary purpose of this meeting is to bring together and to provide a forum for communications and information exchange for the wide cross section of research and management personnel from government, industry, academia, and the national laboratory system that are involved in the initiative. To this end, the meeting will address topics ranging from overviews of the programs, plans, and schedules related to the initiative to detailed issues related to space travel such as materials and shielding needs, human-machine considerations, design of nuclear power and propulsion systems, safety, etc., as indicated in the list of topical areas in the and Technical Program
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The Space Nuclear Conference will have full-length (8-10 page) technical papers, which will be peer reviewed and published on a CD-Rom, available at the meeting. Papers of archival quality will be recommended for publication in a special issue of Nuclear Technology.

In addition to this attending this meeting, one should consider activity in the Aerospace Nuclear Science and Technology Division of ANS.

 

[Astronuc]

Space Nuclear Conference 2005 (SNC '05)
Embedded Topical Meeting at the 2005 ANS Annual Meeting
June 5 - 9, 2005 • Town & Country Hotel • San Diego, CA

http://www3.inspi.ufl.edu/space/program/index.html

If anyone else from PF is there, don't forget to say hi! I'm the one with the grey beard.

 

[Astronuc]

Materials, Materials, MATERIALS !

That is the hot area in nuclear engineering. It seems most university nuclear engineering programs, if they have a course in nuclear materials, usually make it an elective.

If you are a nuclear engineer, and your department does not offer a nuclear materials course, consider finding a materials science or engineering course that may include effects of radiation. Otherwise, make your department offer a special topics course for yourself and others.

The US DOE's National Labs, NASA, and the commercial nuclear industry desparately need (I am not kidding) young engineers who understand the basics of materials and the effects of radiation on material's properties. Also include in that corrosion.

The commercial industry uses Zr-alloys, Stainless steels (primarily SS304L), and Inconels (X750 and 718) in the structural part of LWR nuclear fuel. The core structures are primarily stainless steel, SS304, and the pressure vessel is carbon steel with SS304 liner. Various penetrations employ Inconel 600. All the materials are exposed to varying levels of neutron, gamma and X-ray, in addition to being exposed to water with H₃BO₃ and LiOH in PWRs. In BWRs, because of the boiling, H₃BO₃ is not used. However, BWRs have been using 1) H-injection (HWC = hydrogen water chemistry) to increase the in-core ECP in order to mitigate IASCC/IGSCC of stainless steel structures, Zn-injection (with depleted Zn) to mitigate the dissolution of Co and Ni for dose control, and more recently Noble Metal (Pt,Rh) Addition (NMCA) in order to reduce the H required to maintain a reduced ECP. A side effect of H-injection is the carry over of N-16 to the turbine - which increases the dose in that part of the plant.

One of the largest heat transfer surfaces is steam generator tubing which for most plants was Inconel-600. Most of this material has been replaced with Inconel-690. Siemens European plants have tended to use Incoloy 800, and that material has performed well.

Now back to space. Advanced reactor designs are pushing the limits of materials. Structural metals under consideration are alloys of Nb, Ta, Mo, and W. Nb-1Zr was the baseline alloy for SP-100, but for Project Prometheus (particularly JIMO) it seems too limiting. So now Mo alloys are being considered, although some Ta alloys may be also. However, it appears that there are insufficient irradiation data to demonstrate the satisfactory peformance of these materials in the environment in which they are expected to serve for up to 15 Full Power Years and a lifetime of 20 years.

I would imagine that most institutions might throw in a car with a job offer just to get a nuclear engineer with a good materials background to the job.

I had at least three university faculty members invite me to come to a seminar on materials, and one even suggest I come and teach a course. Hmmm - interesting possibilities. I'll wait until they throw in a Porsche 917K There is a nice fast racetrack near my old uni.

More later when I receive some presentations from the conference.

 

[theCandyman]

Did you find out anthing more? I have looked into this a little and I am signed up for a principals and applications of engineering materials class, it is required for the other material science electives. What are some other basic classes to cover? (I will try to find out if any of the classes deal with radation exposure.)

 

[Astronuc]

It will take a few weeks to track down many of the authors. Hopefully I will make some progress this week.

I spoke with the former president of the company where I worked previously. He is writing a book with another engineer, but it will be very limited in scope. He confirmed what many others have said - there is no good textbook on the degradation of structural materials in irradiation environments. There is just a lot of journal articles that would take months or years to track down.

The US shutdown its two fast reactors, EBR-II in 1994 and FFTF in 1992 (last effective operation). For irradiation in a fast reactor enviroment, the US has to send samples France (Phenix), Japan or Russia. Otherwise, ATR is available. IMO, that's unsatsifactory.