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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Nov 2024
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
December 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2024
Latest News
NRC okays construction permits for Hermes 2 test facility
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced yesterday that it has directed staff to issue construction permits to Kairos Power for the company's proposed Hermes 2 nonpower test reactor facility to be built at the Heritage Center Industrial Park in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The permits authorize Kairos to build a facility with two 35-MWt test reactors that would use molten salt to cool the reactor cores.
Ilyas Yilgor, Eymon Lan, Shanbin Shi
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 753-770
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2087835
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Interest in heat pipe microreactors (HPMRs) has recently grown due to several unique advantages compared with other reactor types. These compact and mobile reactors are expected to find applications in a variety of fields to provide carbon-free power in remote or off-grid locations. Experimental work is needed to aid and expedite the design and licensing of future HPMRs, especially on the validation of heat pipe performance as key heat transfer components. A Low-Temperature Heat Pipe Test Facility (LTHPF) was designed and constructed according to previously developed scaling laws to bypass the difficulties of experimenting with liquid-metal working fluids by using surrogate fluids. The design, instrumentation, and experimental capabilities of the facility are described. The testing conditions, including various operating limits and the ranges of the nondimensional parameters used for scaling analysis, are reported. It is found that certain nondimensional parameters could yield a wide range over the operating conditions, whereas some showed minimal variation when water was used as the working fluid. Last, the performance of several types of wicks, including the annulus-screen, groove-screen, and wrapped-screen designs, were investigated for applications in the LTHPF. It is observed that the groove-screen wick structure provided slight improvement in capillary limits at higher temperatures and that the wrapped-screen wick yielded lower capillary limits due to the absence of a low-resistance flow path for the liquid.