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
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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.
K. N. Schwinkendorf
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 132 | Number 1 | May 1999 | Pages 118-126
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE99-A2053
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Severe accident simulation has been performed in the past to predict the energy release arising from hypothetical core disruptive accidents (CDA) postulated to occur in liquid-metal reactors (LMRs). This field has developed to a mature state with the creation of computer codes such as SIMMER, but these codes are highly specific to LMR designs. More recent attention has focused on thermal-spectrum criticality accidents. This has resulted in the creation of a new simulator code, A Transient History for Energetic Nuclear Accidents_2D (ATHENA_2D), which solves the transient multigroup space-time kinetics equations, coupled to multichannel thermal hydraulics and computational fluid dynamics. This paper presents results from two-dimensional kinetics simulations performed for a water reflood recriticality accident in a damaged light water reactor, typical of a Three Mile Island end-state core geometry. The accident is initiated by assuming reflood water that is insufficiently borated and a reactivity-optimized debris bed. Reactivity insertion rates analyzed in this study generally are smaller than in LMR CDAs (tens of dollars per second versus up to hundreds of dollars per second), and the energetics are slightly lower. Parametric variation of input was performed, including reactivity insertion rate and initial temperature.