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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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
Aug 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2024
Latest News
Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
J. Hope Forsmann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 1 | January 2016 | Pages 213-217
Technical Note | Special Issue on the RELAP5-3D Computer Code | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-141
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To support the functionality of RELAP5-3D for best-estimate reactor simulation code, a variety of utility programs were developed at Idaho National Laboratory. Conversion and upgrades of RELAP5-3D to FORTRAN 95 required the upgrades of these utility programs as well. Pygmalion (Pygi) and the RELAP5-3D Graphical User Interface (RGUI) are two of the utility programs that were upgraded and enhanced.
Pygi creates a copy of a RELAP5-3D input file with updated initial condition information. From the restart/plot file of the RELAP5-3D run of an input deck, Pygi obtains the final conditions for each component. It creates a new input file that replaces the original input file values with updated conditions. This provides an accurate and efficient means of creating new input decks with steady-state input conditions.
RGUI is an alternative to the command line interface for performing RELAP5-3D–related work. RGUI provides single-interface access to other RELAP5-3D tools such as Pygi. It is highly configurable, allowing the user to customize the environment. The interface runs on both Linux and Windows.
This suite of utility programs is continually being enhanced to provide better support for RELAP5-3D users. This technical note provides details of Pygi and RGUI functionality. Future plans for enhancements are also included.