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Division Spotlight
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.
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!
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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.”
Almir Fernandes, Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 113 | Number 2 | February 1996 | Pages 155-166
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35185
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The CONTAIN code is an integrated code for predicting the containment behavior (chemical, physical, and radiological) in a severe accident. It models the thermal hydraulics as well as the aerosol and fission products behavior inside the containment. There are four aerosol deposition mechanisms modeled in the code: settling, diffusion to surfaces, thermophoresis, and diffusiophoresis. In general, the settling and diffusion are the most important. A comparison of the CONTAIN deposition rate expression with a general and more accurate rate expression, however, shows that for most geometries, the code expression overestimates the deposition of small particles, mainly because of an inadequate assumption regarding the dependence of the thickness of the boundary layer on particle size. For some specific geometries, the expression can also overestimate deposition of large particles. The general and more accurate expression is implemented in the CONTAIN code for the cubic and spherical geometries for a test problem. The original and the modified versions of the CONTAIN code are found to yield different results for the suspended aerosol mass. The differences depend on other aerosol processes such as coagulation and also on geometry.