Biographical Sketch

Mitchell T. Farmer

Mitchell Farmer received his Bachelors degree in Nuclear Engineering from Purdue University in 1983, his Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nebraska in 1985, and his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1988.  He is currently a Senior Nuclear Engineer in the Nuclear Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory.  He has over twenty five years of experience in various R&D areas related to reactor development, design, and safety.  A principal career focus area has been light water reactor (LWR) severe accident analysis and experiments.  More recently he has also been involved in the analysis, design, and conduct of experiments related to operations and safety of Generation IV reactor concepts including sodium fast reactors, as well as high-temperature gas cooled reactors.  He has over 180 publications in the above mentioned technical areas.  Dr. Farmer also serves as the Section Manager for the Engineering Development Laboratories within the Nuclear Engineering Division in which these programs are carried out. 

Light Water Reactor Safety R&D at Argonne National Laboratory

M. T. Farmer

Nuclear Engineering Division

Argonne National Laboratory

The recent reactor accidents at Fukushima Dai-ichi have rekindled interest in Light Water Reactor (LWR) safety.  Argonne National Laboratory has a long history of conducting reactor material tests related to LWR severe accident progression; this work was initiated in the wake of the TMI-2 accident in Harrisburg, PA in 1979.  Information gained from this research was beneficial in supporting the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Response Team that provided advice to the Japanese during the Dai-ichi accidents.  However, in recent years there has been a shift in safety research within DOE and at Argonne to investigate reactor cooling systems that can passively remove decay heat without the need for electrical power or operator interdiction under emergency situations.  In theory, these types of advanced cooling systems that rely heavily on natural convection could ride out situations like the one encountered at Dai-ichi.   Argonne has large scale experiment programs that are currently underway that are providing: i) proof-of-principal data for these concepts, and ii) test data to support code validation efforts.   This presentation will provide a historical perspective on the LWR severe accident tests that are still ongoing today at Argonne, as well as the large scale testing that is being carried out in parallel to verify advanced reactor cooling concepts that rely on natural convection heat transfer.