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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.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
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Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Cliff B. Davis
Nuclear Technology | Volume 133 | Number 2 | February 2001 | Pages 187-193
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3168
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Lead-bismuth is currently being considered as a coolant for fast reactors designed to produce low-cost electricity as well as burn actinides. Lead-bismuth fluid properties have been added to the ATHENA code so that it can be used in the thermal-hydraulic analysis of lead-bismuth-cooled reactors. The capability of ATHENA to calculate the void fraction of a two-component, two-phase mixture of liquid lead-bismuth and steam in cocurrent upflow was assessed using the El-Boher and Lesin void correlation. The assessment showed that the drift flux correlations currently available in the code predicted trends that were in reasonable agreement with the El-Boher and Lesin void correlation, but the predicted void fractions were significantly too high. For example, the Kataoka-Ishii correlation, which was the best of the available correlations, predicted void fractions that were up to 30% greater than the values from the El-Boher and Lesin correlation. Consequently, the El-Boher and Lesin correlation was implemented in a modified version of ATHENA. The implementation was complicated by the fact that the El-Boher and Lesin correlation was an explicit correlation for void fraction rather than a drift flux correlation. An approach was developed so that the code's basic drift flux formulation could be used to easily implement an explicit void correlation. The predictions of the modified code were in excellent agreement with the El-Boher and Lesin void correlation.