ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
Standards Program
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Cody S. Wiggins, Arturo Cabral, Lane B. Carasik
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 7 | November 2021 | Pages 710-715
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1898304
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Development and optimization of the plasma-facing components for the fusion reactors ITER and DEMO are necessary for sufficient heat removal because of the high heat fluxes in these systems. In this work, we consider the heat transfer performance of the Cu-Cr-Zr alloy tube with a swirl (twisted tape) insert within a monoblock divertor experiencing cyclic thermal loading expected during ITER operating conditions. Thermal loading is examined up to 2000 cycles, leading to increased tube surface roughness and decreased tube thermal conductivity. A simplified model of thermal-hydraulic performance is used that accounts for forced convection in the swirled flow, conduction through the Cu-Cr-Zr tube, and tube fouling (surface roughness and thermal conductivity changes). From our work, it is found that the overall heat transfer rate of the tube is enhanced with increased thermal loading over a wide range of Reynolds numbers (i.e., flow rates). This is due to the increase of convective heat transfer from turbulence enhancement induced by increasing surface roughness. However, the increase in surface roughness also leads to an increase in pressure losses in the system, requiring increased pumping power to maintain flow rates. We consider the heat transfer rate at equivalent pumping power (quantified by the overall enhancement ratio) and find it has a complicated dependence on Reynolds number and the number of thermal loading cycles. In particular, we see that for a Reynolds number of 1 000 000, the overall enhancement ratio is decreased by up to 9% at 2000 loading cycles. Such a decrease could meaningfully impact the operations of ITER or DEMO, requiring additional pumping input to maintain sufficient heat removal. This suggests the need for further investigation of the thermal-hydraulic performance of plasma-facing components, including the full monoblock assembly, after many loading cycles.