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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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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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.
William D. Fullmer, Sang Yong Lee, Martin A. Lopez De Bertodano
Nuclear Technology | Volume 185 | Number 3 | March 2014 | Pages 296-308
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-66
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Methods to remedy the ill-posedness of the basic one-dimensional two-fluid model, which is widely used in nuclear reactor safety codes, have been the subject of considerable study. Both of the two prevalent methods have drawbacks. Unconditional hyperbolization uses nonphysical constitutive relations to create a well-posed two-fluid model that is hyperbolic over all flow conditions. However, when the model is hyperbolized, it is also stabilized, which is not a universal property of two-phase flows. The second method, the preferred method of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety codes, is to simply use a first-order upwind numerical method that relies on numerical viscosity to regularize the ill-posedness of the model by damping the short-wavelength instabilities. Unfortunately, the scale of the “short wavelength” is related to a particular numerical grid or discretization. Because of the consistency of the numerical method, in the limit of an infinitely resolved grid, i.e., the numerical viscosity vanishes, as does its regularization effect. This results in a somewhat heuristic user guideline that suggests a lower limit on the grid size based on a cross-sectional dimension that is a combination of the long-wavelength assumption and experience. However, a cutoff wavelength achieved by numerical viscosity is not set by the grid size alone but also depends on the time step, the material, and the flow properties, as demonstrated with a von Neumann stability analysis. This can create poor resolution in areas where numerical stability may not be a substantial problem, unless the guideline is intentionally violated. Additionally, strict observance of this limit makes verification by convergence difficult or impossible. Therefore, it is proposed that an artificial viscosity be prescribed explicitly, i.e., independently of any particular numerical method or grid. An artificial viscosity model is derived that prescribes exactly a cutoff in the linear stability growth rate at a specified wavelength, e.g., consistent with the aforementioned user guideline. It is shown, using the water faucet problem, that the proposed artificial viscosity model can be used to remove the high-frequency component of the solution without limiting the resolution of the grid. Furthermore, the solution also converges, which was not the case without the artificial viscosity.