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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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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.
George M. Daskalov, Randal S. Baker, Robert C. Little, David W. O. Rogers, Jeffrey F. Williamson
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 134 | Number 2 | February 2000 | Pages 121-134
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE00-A2106
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The DANTSYS discrete ordinates computer code system is applied to quantitative estimation of water kerma rate distributions in the vicinity of discrete photon sources with energies in the 20- to 800-keV range in two-dimensional cylindrical r-z geometry. Unencapsulated sources immersed in cylindrical water phantoms of 40-cm diameter and 40-cm height are modeled in either homogeneous phantoms or shielded by Ti, Fe, and Pb filters with thicknesses of 1 and 2 mean free paths. The obtained dose results are compared with corresponding photon Monte Carlo simulations. A 210-group photon cross-section library for applications in this energy range is developed and applied, together with a general-purpose 42-group library developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, for DANTSYS calculations. The accuracy of DANTSYS with the 42-group library relative to Monte Carlo exhibits large pointwise fluctuations from -42 to +84%. The major cause for the observed discrepancies is determined to be the inadequacy of the weighting function used for the 42-group library derivation. DANTSYS simulations with a finer 210-group library show excellent accuracy on and off the source transverse plane relative to Monte Carlo kerma calculations, varying from -4.9 to 3.7%. The P3 Legendre polynomial expansion of the angular scattering function is shown to be sufficient for accurate calculations. The results demonstrate that DANTSYS is capable of calculating photon doses in very good agreement with Monte Carlo and that the multigroup cross-section library and efficient techniques for mitigation of ray effects are critical for accurate discrete ordinates implementation.
