Control Rod Heterogeneity Effects in Liquid-Metal Fast Breeder Reactors: Method Developments and Experimental Validation

A journey into Massimo Salvatores scientific work

Massimo SALVATORES was not the man of a country, an organization, or a team. Certainly because of his origin, his education, and his culture, Massimo has always favored a broader and more open collaboration instead of a bureaucratic and shortsighted approach to the research, keeping the achievements only to a restricted inner circle. He was convinced that disinterested sharing makes one stronger and Massimo is one of the few nuclear reactor physicists who elevated international collaboration to its highest level. A short history of the major contributions that Massimo made to his dear discipline, Neutronics, will emphasize this peculiar aspect of his career.

Massimo Salvatores: integral experiments and their use for the validation of nuclear data and the neutronic design of advanced nuclear systems

Among the many domains of reactor physics on which Massimo Salvatores gave his considerable contributions, he was particularly passionate about integral experiments. In this paper, we make a review of selected experimental campaigns among the numerous ones he has promoted, conceived, designed, directed, or analyzed. They have been regrouped in a temporal sequence corresponding to the different periods of Massimo's career, which exceeded 50 years. When possible, for each of the experiments we provide a brief description, the goal for which it was conceived and carried out, and the practical impact on validation and design improvement. Finally, the conclusions offer thoughts and suggestions for the future of the integral experiments and a possible way of honoring the invaluable legacy that Massimo Salvatores has left to us.