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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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2024
Latest News
Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
Fabiano Gibson Daud Thulu, Ayah Elshahat, Mohamed Hassan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 5 | May 2022 | Pages 568-583
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.2009984
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is crucial to do safety evaluation of different postulated transient scenarios in actual nuclear power plants (NPPs). Some of the common analyzed scenarios are primary coolant tube rupture and station blackout (SBO). In this research, it was supposed that after establishment of a steady-state condition, an instantaneous guillotine large-break loss-of-coolant accident (LB-LOCA) of 850-mm inside diameter in one of the reactor vessel cold legs occurred, accompanied with SBO. The event progression and the variation of different reactor parameters like loop pressures, mass flow rates, fuel and clad temperature, injection rate of accumulators (ACCs), decay, and reactor power were investigated using the RELAP5/SCDAPSIM/MOD3.5 thermal-hydraulic program. The reactor consequences due to availability and unavailability of passive ACCs were compared. These kinds of analyses assist in estimating the time available to perform operator safety actions. This in turn aids in emergency planning and severe accident management. The results reveal that fuel damage decreased after the introduction of ACCs. Actuation of ACCs at their actuation setpoints provided core cooling by injecting water into the reactor core. However, ACCs alone are inadequate to contain long-term core cooling during a persistent LB-LOCA. The results obtained in the research were compared with MELCOR 2.1 and ASTEC V1.3, and a cohesive agreement was obtained. Therefore, RELAP5/SCDAPSIM/MOD3.5 is capable of modeling a LB-LOCA and SBO in VVER-1000, and it provides a significant analytical capability of safety systems for specialists in the field in NPP safety.