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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
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
First astatine-labeled compound shipped in the U.S.
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
Sheng Zhang, Hsun-Chia Lin, Xiaodong Sun
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 920-946
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2102389
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Molten salt reactors (MSRs) are a class of Generation IV nuclear reactors using molten salts as heat transfer fluids. MSRs bring a number of benefits, including low primary system working pressure, high working temperature, and enhanced safety due to the passive safety systems adopted. Although MSRs promise these benefits, a number of key technology needs, such as the accurate prediction of the thermal-hydraulic performance of the passive safety systems, which completely rely on natural circulation, are indispensable for MSR development, licensing, and future deployment. Therefore, this study develops the one-dimensional (1D) NAtural Circulation COde (NACCO) considering the buoyancy and radiative heat transfer effects in high-temperature molten salts for such predictions. The 1D code, developed using MATLAB, is then benchmarked with experimental data from three natural circulation flow experiments, where water, nitrate salt NaNO3-KNO3 (60–40 wt%), and fluoride salt LiF-BeF2 (66–34 mol%, FLiBe) were used as the working fluids. Our analysis shows that (1) the buoyancy and radiative heat transfer effects need to be considered for high-temperature molten salt natural circulation flows, while the radiative heat transfer effect is negligible for low-temperature water flows in the natural circulation experiments investigated, and (2) the 1D code NACCO predicts salt temperature profiles reasonably well, with less than 18°C and 25°C discrepancies from experimental data for the pipe centerline temperature of NaNO3-KNO3 and FLiBe up to 450°C and 750°C, respectively.