Alumnus Mitch Farmer Receives ANS Special Award

6/23/2014 Susan Mumm, Editor

Written by Susan Mumm, Editor

Alumnus Mitch Farmer Receives ANS Special Award

 

Mitchell T. Farmer receiving the ANS Special Award.
Mitchell T. Farmer receiving the ANS Special Award.

The national American Nuclear Society has honored NPRE alumnus Mitchell T. Farmer, an expert in Reactor Safety Experimentation, for his work in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident.

 

Farmer, PhD 88, received the ANS 2014 Special Award “for major internationally recognized contributions to the understanding and modeling of severe accident phenomena in LWR (light water reactor) plants, and for technical assistance to Japan following the Fukushima accident.” The award was presented to Farmer at the ANS Annual Meeting this month in Reno, Nevada.

Farmer is Safety Manager of Reactor Safety Experimentation in Argonne National Laboratory’s Nuclear Engineering Division. He has 26 years of experience in various areas that include LWR severe accident analysis and experiments, in addition to analysis and experiments on advanced Generation IV reactor systems that include sodium fast reactors and high-temperature gas cooled reactors.

Farmer also manages the division’s Reactor Safety Testing and Analysis section, where Argonne scientists design, build, and operate test facilities providing validation data for a variety of advanced computational tools:

  • The section’s corium/concrete interaction experiments, in which researchers simulate reactor core melt phenomena, support development of severe accident codes. These tools can help predict the consequences of reactor core melt events such as those at the Fukushima power station.
  • Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes are being used to predict heat transfer and fluid flow within nuclear power plants. They are used in new plant design as well as in efforts to increase safety margins in existing plants.
  • The section also evaluates performance capabilities of decay heat removal systems.
  • The scientists further conduct sodium and supercritical-CO experiments to examine fundamental heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and chemistry phenomena to support design of advanced nuclear reactors and energy conversion systems.

The ANS Special Award recognizes an individual or individuals for especially meritorious contributions in research and/or developing understanding in important areas of current activity. The ANS Board of Directors annually determines a topic based on recommendations from the Honors and Awards Committee. Each topic is selected because of the importance of the issue with regard to the peaceful application of nuclear technology to all mankind.

Farmer’s assistance and expertise following Fukushima was recognized in Fall 2011 with the U.S. Department of Energy Secretary’s Achievement Honor Award as well as a Letter of Appreciation from the DOE.


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This story was published June 23, 2014.