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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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
Dec 2025
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2026
Nuclear Technology
December 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
AI at work: Southern Nuclear’s adoption of Copilot agents drives fleet forward
Southern Nuclear is leading the charge in artificial intelligence integration, with employee-developed applications driving efficiencies in maintenance, operations, safety, and performance.
The tools span all roles within the company, with thousands of documented uses throughout the fleet, including improved maintenance efficiency, risk awareness in maintenance activities, and better-informed decision-making. The data-intensive process of preparing for and executing maintenance operations is streamlined by leveraging AI to put the right information at the fingertips for maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, engineers, and technicians.
M. R. Baer, S. K. Griffiths, J. E. Shepherd
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 88 | Number 3 | November 1984 | Pages 436-444
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE84-A18597
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Water fogs are recognized as an effective means to mitigate the effects of large-scale hydrogen combustion that might accompany some loss-of-coolant nuclear reactor accidents. Fogs of sufficiently high density to produce large beneficial effects may, however, be difficult to generate and maintain. An alternate method of suspending the desired mass of water is via high expansion-ratio aqueous foams. Because, in practice, the foam would be generated using the combustible gaseous contents of the containment vessel, combustion occurs inside the foam cells. Although foams generated with inert gas have been well studied for use in fire fighting, little is known about combustion in foams generated with flammable mixtures. To help assess the usefulness of aqueous foams in a mitigation plan, several open-tube tests and more than 100 closed-vessel tests of hydrogen/air combustion, with and without foam were conducted. At low and intermediate hydrogen concentrations, the foam has little effect on the ultimate isochoric pressure rise. Above 15% hydrogen concentration, the foam causes a significant reduction in the pressure rise. The maximum effect occurs at ∼28% hydrogen (the stoichiometric limit is 29.6% hydrogen) where the peak overpressure is reduced by 2½. Despite this overall pressure reduction, the flame speed is increased by up to an order of magnitude for combustion in the foam, and strong pressure fluctuations are observed near a hydrogen concentration of 23%.