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
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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 Technology
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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Byeong-Il Jang, Moo Hwan Kim, Gyoodong Jeun
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 203-216
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13366
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Research regarding small- and medium-sized nuclear reactors (SMRs) has increased because of multipurpose applications and increased safety. According to this tendency, a new conceptual nuclear reactor, the Regional Energy rX-10MWt (REX-10), is being designed. REX-10 adopts a way to remove heat by natural circulation and integrates the primary systems within a reactor pressure vessel. To evaluate the steady-state and transient behavior of natural circulation in REX-10, a NAtural Circulation TEst Reactor (NACTER) is designed using the scaling law. The ratio of the height and core power are 1/3 and 1/500, respectively.This research can be divided into three parts - a steady-state experiment, a transient experiment, and MARS (Multidimensional Analysis for Research Safety) code analysis. To investigate the natural circulation characteristics under the steady-state conditions, two parameters were chosen and various experiments were conducted. As a result of the steady-state experiment, we show that the most important parameter that affects the natural circulation behavior is the heater power. In addition, we carried out a transient experiment. The results of the transient experiment are that the NACTER facility is well controlled and guarantees safety in abrupt changes in experimental conditions. Finally, MARS code simulations were conducted. The MARS code results show good agreement with the experimental results.
