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
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
N. Chikhi, P. Fouquart, J. Delacroix, P. Piluso
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 200-212
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1486160
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In-vessel retention (IVR) is an attractive strategy to mitigate a severe accident. However, because of low margins, it remains questionable for reactors of power of 1000 MW(electric) and higher. The success of the IVR strategy mainly depends on the mechanical behavior of the vessel after being ablated and on the inner thermal load, i.e., the heat flux transferred by the molten pool to the vessel, which has to remain lower than the critical heat flux. In some configurations, the stratification of the molten pool may lead to heat flux concentration in the thermal conductive metallic layer. An understanding of the metal layer behavior is fundamental in order to estimate the inner thermal load and requires knowing the liquid-metal physical properties, such as density and surface tension. In the present paper, original data of vessel thermophysical properties are proposed for the first time. Measurements of Type 304L stainless steel and 16MND5 ferritic steel density and surface tension have been made using the sessile drop method. Samples have been melted to form a drop on a yttria-stabilized zirconia substrate and heated up to 200°C above the melting point. Low Bond Axisymmetric Drop Shape Analysis has been used to estimate the sample density and surface tension and to propose correlations for the density and surface tension as a function of temperature. The influence of steel properties on metal layer cooling has been discussed. Especially, the sign of the metal temperature surface tension coefficient was found to be most likely positive. In this case, the Bénard-Marangoni flow is opposite to the Rayleigh-Bénard convection flow.