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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Two steps forward for U.K. advanced nuclear
This week, two significant announcements have emerged from the United Kingdom’s advanced reactor sector.
On June 14, Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they had signed two trilateral memorandums of cooperation to collaborate on “advanced modular reactor (AMR) technology, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), and the coated particle fuel these reactors will use.”
Separately, on June 16, Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower announced that its Natrium reactor design has been formally submitted for U.K. regulatory review. The company also announced the formation of a new subsidiary, TerraPower UK Ltd.
Antti Daavittila, Anitta Hämäläinen, Riitta Kyrki-Rajamäki
Nuclear Technology | Volume 142 | Number 2 | May 2003 | Pages 116-123
Technical Paper | OECD/NRC MSLB Benchmark | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3377
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
All of the three exercises of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Regulatory Commission pressurized water reactor main steam line break (PWR MSLB) benchmark were calculated at VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland. For the first exercise, the plant simulation with point-kinetic neutronics, the thermal-hydraulics code SMABRE was used. The second exercise was calculated with the three-dimensional reactor dynamics code TRAB-3D, and the third exercise with the combination TRAB-3D/SMABRE. VTT has over ten years' experience of coupling neutronic and thermal-hydraulic codes, but this benchmark was the first time these two codes, both developed at VTT, were coupled together. The coupled code system is fast and efficient; the total computation time of the 100-s transient in the third exercise was 16 min on a modern UNIX workstation. The results of all the exercises are similar to those of the other participants. In order to demonstrate the effect of secondary circuit modeling on the results, three different cases were calculated. In case 1 there is no phase separation in the steam lines and no flow reversal in the aspirator. In case 2 the flow reversal in the aspirator is allowed, but there is no phase separation in the steam lines. Finally, in case 3 the drift-flux model is used for the phase separation in the steam lines, but the aspirator flow reversal is not allowed. With these two modeling variations, it is possible to cover a remarkably broad range of results. The maximum power level reached after the reactor trip varies from 534 to 904 MW, the range of the time of the power maximum being close to 30 s. Compared to the total calculated transient time of 100 s, the effect of the secondary side modeling is extremely important.