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
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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
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.
Nicholas T. Saltos,* Richard N. Christensen, Tunc Aldemir
Nuclear Technology | Volume 83 | Number 1 | October 1988 | Pages 93-109
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34178
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A methodology is presented to determine the transient temperature distributions in fuel bundles under loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA) conditions using a recently developed variational technique for the solution of radial-azimuthal heat conduction in the fuel rods and the modified view factor concept proposed by Uchida and Nakamura to model the radiative heat transfer between the rods. The variational technique is based on the Lebon-Labermont restricted variational principle and represents the temperature distribution in the rods at a given time during the LOCA via parabolic and circular trial functions in the radial and azimuthal directions, respectively. The methodology is implemented to a 4 × 4 boiling water reactor fuel bundle under typical LOCA conditions to investigate the effects of changes in rod heat transfer characteristics and simplifying modeling assumptions on predicted rod temperature distributions. The results show that these effects depend on the rod location in the assembly and LOCA phase under consideration and indicate that same degree of modeling detail may not be necessary for all the rods in the bundle at all times during the LOCA. An important advantage of the methodology is that it selects the optimum number of trial functions for each rod and for each time step in the simulation to reduce the computation time without compromising solution accuracy. Other advantages are that (a) the variational technique is faster than finite difference techniques for comparable accuracy and uses the same algorithm for one-dimensional radial and two-dimensional solutions, and (b) formulation of the heat conduction problem in the rods is compatible with the modular accident analysis codes already in use in the nuclear industry.