Publications related to Loss-of-coolant accident

Extension of the OFFBEAT fuel performance code to finite strains and validation against LOCA experiments

Andreas Pautz, Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

The mechanical analysis of nuclear fuel behavior under base-irradiation conditions has traditionally been performed adopting the small-strain approximation. However, many cases of interest for fuel behavior involve the occurrence of large rod deformations ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Towards coupling conventional with high-fidelity fuel behavior analysis tools

Andreas Pautz, Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

Multi-dimensional fuel performance codes have the potential to enhance the understanding of complex phenomena affecting fuel integrity, but their application is often limited by the high computational cost. Recognizing that many multi-dimensional aspects s ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

A design proposal for the European DEMO superconducting bus bars and current leads

Pierluigi Bruzzone, Kamil Sedlák, Rainer Wesche, Roberto Guarino

The integration of the feeder system in a tokamak involves complex engineering, manufacturing and logistics issues. Therefore, within the pre-conceptual design activities of the European DEMO fusion reactor, it is important to provide a preliminary sizing ...

2021

Investigation of the density shoulder formation by using self-consistent simulations of plasma turbulence and neutral kinetic dynamics

Paolo Ricci, Davide Mancini, Nicola Vianello, Maurizio Giacomin

Simulations of plasma turbulence in a lower single-null magnetic configurations are presented. The plasma dynamics is modelled by the drift-reduced two-fluid Braginskii equations that are coupled with a kinetic model for a single neutral species that consi ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2021

Uncertainty analyses of spent nuclear fuel decay heat calculations using SCALE modules

Andreas Pautz, Dimitri Rochman, Stefano Caruso

Decay heat residuals of spent nuclear fuel (SNF), i.e., the differences between calculations and measurements, were obtained previously for various spent fuel assemblies (SFA) using the Polaris module of the SCALE code system. In this paper, we compare dec ...

2021

Simulation and experimental validation of pulsating heat pipes

John Richard Thome, Jackson Braz Marcinichen, Philippe Aubin, Filippo Cataldo

The one-dimensional transient numerical code of JJ Cooling Innovation has been significantly improved to simulate the thermal/hydraulic performance of pulsating heat pipes (PHPs). Using a mechanistic approach, the liquid slug and vapor plug flows and their ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2021

Systematic Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analysis of Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Systems

Friederike Bostelmann

Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) technologies have the potential to guarantee energy supply and to reduce the burden of nuclear waste for future generations. For an adequate simulation of these reactor systems, well-established tools that have so far been ...

EPFL2020

Preliminary design and analysis of Liquid Fuel Molten Salt Reactor using multi-physics code GeN-Foam

Carlo Fiorina

In this study, a hypothetical fast spectrum Liquid Fuel Molten Salt Reactor (LFMSR) core is modeled using the multiphysics C++ code GeN-Foam (General Nuclear Foam). GeN-Foam is based on OpenFOAM, a C++ opensource library for solution of continuum mechanics ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2020

Application of causality analysis on nuclear reactor systems

Andreas Pautz, Hakim Ferroukhi, Dionysios Chionis, Abdelhamid Dokhane

Causality analysis is a substantial tool for identifying cause-and-effect links between different components of a system and has been extensively used in various areas of science such as neuroscience, climatology, and econometrics. This analysis is carried ...

American Institute of Physics2019

Control of the hydrogen:deuterium isotope mixture using pellets in JET

Olivier Sauter, Ambrogio Fasoli, Yiming Li, Basil Duval, Jonathan Graves, Duccio Testa, Patrick Blanchard, Federico Alberto Alfredo Felici, Henri Weisen, Alessandro Pau, Federico Nespoli, Hamish William Patten, Cristian Sommariva, Antoine Pierre Emmanuel Alexis Merle, Samuel Lanthaler, Haomin Sun, Michele Marin, Richard Pitts, Yann Camenen, Jan Horacek, Javier García Hernández, Marco Wischmeier, Nicola Vianello, Mikhail Maslov, Yao Zhou, Davide Galassi, Antonio José Pereira de Figueiredo, Emiliano Fable, Francesca Maria Poli, Daniele Brunetti, Anna Teplukhina, Alberto Mariani, Kenji Tanaka, Bernhard Sieglin, Otto Asunta, Gergely Papp, Leonardo Pigatto

Deuterium pellets are injected into an initially pure hydrogen H-mode plasma in order to control the hydrogen: deuterium (H:D) isotope mixture. The pellets are deposited in the outer 20% of the minor radius, similar to that expected in ITER, creating trans ...

2019

Modelling of JET DT experiments in ILW configurations

Olivier Sauter, Ambrogio Fasoli, Basil Duval, Stefano Coda, Martinus Gijs, Jonathan Graves, Yves Martin, Duccio Testa, Patrick Blanchard, Bruno Emanuel Ferreira De Sousa Correia, Alessandro Pau, Pierre-Thomas Paul Brun, Cristian Sommariva, Henri Weisen, Richard Pitts, Sun Hee Kim, Yann Camenen, Jan Horacek, Javier García Hernández, Marco Wischmeier, Mikhail Maslov, Nicola Vianello, Miguel Fernández Ruiz, Federico Nespoli, Antonio José Pereira de Figueiredo, Liang Yao, Yao Zhou, David Pfefferlé, Dalziel Joseph Wilson, Robin Humphry-Baker, Davide Galassi, José Pedro Rebelo Ferreira Marques, Ana Francisca Leal Silva Soares, Jonathan Marc Philippe Faustin, Daniel Scott Alessi, Arnout Lodewijk M Beckers, Julio Rodriguez, Hamish William Patten, Jonnathan Cesar Hidalgo Acosta, Samuel Lanthaler, , , , , , , ,

Modelling of fuel fragmentation, relocation and dispersal during Loss-of-Coolant Accident in Light Water Reactor

Vladimir Vladimirov Brankov

Recent LOCA tests with high burnup fuel at the OECD Halden Reactor Project and at Studsvik demonstrated the susceptibility of the fuel to fragment to small pieces, to relocate and possibly cause a hot-spot effect and to be dispersed in the event of claddin ...

EPFL2017

Investigation of the thermal conductivity of SiC/SiC cladding before and after irradiation

Loïc Guillaume Fave

Silicon carbide based composites are candidates for structural components and fuel claddings in nuclear power plants. In the frame of accident tolerant fuel research, the effective through-thickness thermal conductivity of SiC/SiC prototype claddings is in ...

EPFL2017

Thermal-hydraulic modeling of a novel HTS CICC for nuclear fusion applications

Pierluigi Bruzzone

A thermal-hydraulic model has been developed for the novel cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC) recently proposed by ENEA, which foresees the use of 2nd Generation REBCO-based Coated Conductor tapes stacked into twisted grooves slotted into an Al core. A cent ...

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2016

Innovative low-mass cooling systems for the ALICE ITS Upgrade detector at CERN

Manuel Gómez Marzoa

The Phase-1 upgrade of the LHC to full design luminosity, planned for 2019 at CERN, requires the modernisation of the experiments around the accelerator. The Inner Tracking System (ITS), the innermost detector at the ALICE experiment, will be upgraded by r ...

EPFL2016

Efficient, compact and low loss thermo-optic phase shifter in silicon

Christophe Marcel Georges Galland

We design a resistive heater optimized for efficient and low-loss optical phase modulation in a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguide and characterize the fabricated devices. Modulation is achieved by flowing current perpendicular to a new ridge waveguide g ...

Optical Soc Amer2014

On the stability enhancement of cuprous oxide water splitting photocathodes by low temperature steam annealing

Michael Graetzel, Morgan Mertens Stefik, Stanley David Tilley, Ludmilla Steier

Given the intermittent nature of solar radiation, the large-scale use of solar energy requires an efficient energy storage solution. So far, the only practical way to store such large amounts of energy is in the form of a chemical energy carrier, i.e., a f ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2014

Recent progress in R&D on tungsten alloys for divertor structural and plasma facing materials

Nadine Baluc, Ho Ling Li, Antoine Cyril David Hoffmann

Tungsten materials are candidates for plasma-facing components for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor and the DEMOnstration power plant because of their superior thermophysical properties. Because these materials are not common structural ...

Elsevier Science Bv2013

Analysis of Advanced Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor Core Designs with Improved Safety Characteristics

Kaichao Sun

In order to meet the steadily increasing worldwide energy demand, nuclear power is expected to continue playing a key role in electricity production. Currently, the large majority of nuclear power plants are operated with thermal-neutron spectra and need r ...

EPFL2012

Neutronics Experiments and Analysis Related to Strong Moderation Heterogeneity in LWRs

Dominik Rätz

The Supercritical-Water-Cooled Reactor (SCWR) is the Generation IV reactor concept most closely related to current light water reactors (LWRs). The SCWR builds on the vast experience with today's LWRs and supercritical coal-fired power plants. Water at sup ...

EPFL2012