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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.
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!
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
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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.
Tamara Andreeva, Craig D. Beidler, Ewald Harmeyer, Yuri L. Igitkhanov, Yaroslav I. Kolesnichenko, Vadym V. Lutsenko, Alexander Shishkin, Franz Herrnegger, Johann Kißlinger, Horst F. G. Wobig
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 46 | Number 2 | September 2004 | Pages 395-400
Technical Papers | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A579
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Helias reactor (HSR) is an upgraded version of the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) experiment. A straightforward extrapolation of W7-X leads to a five-period configuration with a major radius of 22 m. To reduce the size of the reactor, another option with four periods has been investigated. Recent studies have focused on a three-period Helias configuration (HSR3/15i) (major radius 15 m, plasma radius 2.5 m, B = 5 T), which presents a more compact option than the five- and four-period configurations. In HSR3/15i, the resulting magnetic configuration is consistent with the island divertor concept. The stochastic region outside the last magnetic surface is imposed by the remnants of the 3/4 islands and the plasma flows along distinct channels toward the plates. The main problem is due to the high value of the bootstrap current (~1 MA) and alpha-particle losses (estimated as 6%). Further optimization of HSR3/15i can cause the maximum value of the magnetic field at the superconductive coils to be exceeded. There is a trade-off between physics goals (alpha-particle confinement and small bootstrap current) and technical realization (NbTi technology). The comparative analysis of different period configurations will be presented.