Engineers must manage a maelstrom in the core of operating nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactions deposit an extraordinary amount of heat in the fuel rods, setting off a frenzy of boiling, bubbling, and evaporation in surrounding fluid. From this churning flow, operators harness the removal of heat.
In search of greater efficiencies in nuclear systems, scientists have long sought to characterize and predict the physics underlying these processes of heat transfer, with only modest success.
