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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
M. Yoda, S. I. Abdel-Khalik, D. L. Sadowski, B. H. Mills, J. D. Rader
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 1 | January 2015 | Pages 142-157
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-792
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Current predictions suggest that the target plate of a divertor, as one of the few solid surfaces directly exposed to the plasma of a magnetic fusion energy reactor, will be subject to steady-state heat fluxes as great as 10 MW/m2. Developing appropriate methods for cooling these divertors with helium is therefore a major technological challenge for plasma-facing components. This paper reviews dynamically similar experimental studies and numerical simulations of the thermal-hydraulic performance of two helium-cooled divertor concepts, the helium-cooled divertor with multiple-jet cooling (HEMJ) and the helium-cooled flat plate divertor, as well as a variant of the HEMJ, the so-called finger-type divertor, performed as part of the ARIES study. The results from these studies are extrapolated to prototypical conditions and used to predict the maximum average heat flux and coolant pumping power requirements for these divertor concepts. These extrapolations can be used to estimate how changes in the operating conditions, such as the helium inlet temperature and the maximum temperature of the divertor pressure boundary, affect thermal performance. Finally, the correlations from these extrapolations are used in the system code developed by the ARIES study.