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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
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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June 2025
Nuclear Technology
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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
A. Petruzzi, M. Cherubini, M. Lanfredini, F. D’Auria, O. Mazzantini
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 1 | January 2016 | Pages 113-160
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the RELAP5-3D Computer Code | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-145
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Within the licensing process of the Atucha-II pressurized heavy water reactor, the best-estimate plus uncertainty (BEPU) approach has been selected for issuing Chapter 15 of the Final Safety Analysis Report. The RELAP5-3D code developed by Idaho National Laboratory has been adopted as the best-estimate system thermal-hydraulic code to perform the accident analyses. The complexity of a nuclear power plant (NPP) and of the accident scenarios may be a challenge for a conservative analysis and may justify the choice of a BEPU approach in the licensing process. This implies two main needs: (1) the need to adopt and to prove (to the regulatory authority) an adequate quality for the computational tools and (2) the need to account for the uncertainty. The purpose of the present paper is to outline key aspects of the BEPU process aimed at the licensing of the Atucha-II (CNA-II) NPP in Argentina operated by Nucleoeléctrica Argentina (NA-SA). Among the general attributes of a methodology to perform accident analysis of a NPP for licensing purposes, the very first one should be compliance with the established regulatory requirements. A second attribute deals with the adequacy and the completeness of the selected spectrum of events that should consider the combined contributions of deterministic and probabilistic methods. The third attribute is connected to the availability of qualified tools and analytical procedures suitable for the analysis of accident conditions envisaged for the NPP of concern. The execution of the overall analysis and the evaluation of results in relation to slightly fewer than 100 scenarios revealed the wide safety margins available for the NPP of concern, which was licensed on May 29, 2014.
