ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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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
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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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Latest News
New laws offer nuclear industry incentives for existing power plant uprates
This year, the U.S. nuclear industry received a much-needed economic boost that could help preserve operating nuclear power plants and incentivize upgrades that extend their lifespan and power output.
Signed into law in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act offers production tax credits (PTCs) for existing nuclear power plants and either PTCs or investment tax credits (ITCs) for new carbon-free generation. These credits could make power uprates—increasing the maximum power level at which a commercial plant may operate—a much more appealing option for utilities.
J. M. Ryskamp, D. R. Harris, M. Becker
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 77 | Number 3 | March 1981 | Pages 285-296
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE81-A19839
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The sensitivity of light water reactor (LWR) fuel cycle parameters and costs to uncertainties in thermal nuclear data and methods is examined using a code package developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Cross sections averaged over the thermal energy (<1- or 2-eV) group are shown to have an important economic role for LWRs. When it has been determined that fuel cycle parameters and costs are sensitive to a specific thermal group cross section, it becomes desirable to determine how specific energy-dependent cross sections influence fuel cycle parameters and costs. The FASTT code was written to compute detailed sensitivity coefficients using either a direct or a perturbation technique. Multigroup cross-section sensitivity coefficients vary with fuel exposure. After computing the changed exposure-dependent thermal group cross section, new fuel cycle parameters and costs are computed by a sequence of fuel depletion, core analysis, and cost codes. One can therefore obtain the change in fuel cycle cost for different fuel cycle options induced by a change in the shape of a detailed thermal cross section. A striking feature of our thermal analyses is the (usually) overwhelming importance of the hardened Maxwellian energy region (0.01 to 0.1 eV). The FASTT code is also used to determine the importance of the frequency distribution used to compute neutron scattering kernels based on the incoherent approximation. The sensitivities to Nelkin's scattering data are not large. A method, having potentially large implications for LWR design, is developed for obtaining correspondence among different scattering kernels.