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
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Yassin A. Hassan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 69 | Number 3 | June 1985 | Pages 257-267
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33609
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three-dimensional fluid and thermal mixing analysis of a full-scale cold leg and downcomer of a Babcock & Wilcox-designed pressurized water reactor is performed. The impetus of the present study is to provide an accurate estimation of the local fluid temperatures in the cold leg and downcomer when the cold high-pressure safety fluid is injected into the cold leg carrying a hot fluid. Such temperature predictions are needed in resolving the so-called pressurized thermal shock issue in the nuclear industry. The unique feature of this study is the use of the accurate mass-flow-weighted skew-upwind scheme to approximate the convective transport terms in the COMMIX-1A code approximation of the fluid energy equation. This new scheme is shown to considerably reduce the false diffusion that plagued multidimensional thermal-hydraulic applications. The computed fluid velocity patterns and temperature predictions have shown similar behavior to the flow visualization and temperature field measurements in scaled experiments.