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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Kashuai Du, Po Hu, Lefu Zhang, Weibo Wang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 10 | October 2019 | Pages 1129-1146
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1591094
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the passive containment cooling system (PCCS) of an AP1000-type pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant, the air convective heat transfer in the external channel of the containment plays a key role under accident conditions. In this study, the containment external channel is simplified into a large-scale rectangular channel with asymmetric heating, and an experimental and numerical study is conducted to evaluate the air heat transfer characteristics. In addition, the effect of the entry form, which comprises an irregular inlet duct and a pore plate, is considered. First, the results show that heat transfer is enhanced by the entry form, which can be verified by numerical simulation and experiment. Second, when analyzing the air heat transfer characteristics of the actual PCCS annular channel, the Gnielinski correlation is relatively conservative since this correlation hugely underestimates the heat transfer rate of numerical cases in a large-scale rectangular channel with the entry form.
