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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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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
B. P. Chock, T. B. Jones, D. R. Harding
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 70 | Number 2 | August-September 2016 | Pages 206-218
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-215
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The electric-field–assembly technique proposed for making fusion targets uses the electrical force from dielectrophoresis and electrowetting-on-dielectric phenomena to form droplets of oil and water, combine them into an emulsion, and then center one phase inside the surrounding immiscible phase. Forming the water droplet becomes more problematic with the addition of a surfactant, which is needed to stabilize an oil-in-water emulsion. The effect of increasing the amount of surfactant on the droplet-dispensing process is presented, and a mechanism for this behavior is provided.
Increasing the surfactant concentration slows the rate at which surfactant-water droplets are dispensed and increases the variability in the volume of successive droplets. This effect becomes more pronounced near the critical micelle concentration (CMC). Increasing the applied electric field (V > 75 Vrms) improves the dispensing process but decreases the lifetime of the dielectric coatings (for V > 125 Vrms). The stronger electric field forces surfactant molecules to aggregate at the edges of the water droplet where the electrical forces are the greatest. The difficulty of separating a surfactant-laden droplet from the bulk fluid is attributed to the reduced liquid-air surface tension, the lower liquid-substrate surface energy, and a higher disjoining pressure in the thin-film membrane attaching the droplet to the bulk fluid.
The parameters studied include the surfactant concentration (Silwet L-77) from 0 to 0.025 wt% (2.5× the CMC limit), the voltage from 75 to 150 Vrms, and the frequency from 0.1 to 10 kHz.
