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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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!
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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.
Olugbenga O. Noah, Johan F. Slabber, Josua P. Meyer
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 3 | March 2016 | Pages 375-390
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-56
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Natural convection heat transfer in fluid-saturated porous media has in recent years gained considerable attention especially in high-temperature reactors. It is proposed in this study that light water reactors (LWRs) can be made safer by redesigning the fuel in the fuel assembly. The proposed design is aimed at increasing the safety level in LWRs by the use of fuel in the form of loose coated particles in a helium environment inside the nuclear fuel cladding tubes of the fuel elements. The coated particle fuel being a heat source forms a bed in the cladding tube closed at both ends, the heat from the particles is transferred to the gas in the tube, and the gas movement is due to natural convection. In this study, we investigate the heat transfer characteristics inside a cladding tube containing packed beds of spherical particles by simulating a porous region whose medium properties are defined; that is, the geometrical model representing the packed bed is specified as a porous region. The finite volume method was used in solving the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation while the heat transfer coefficient h and the dimensionless numbers such as Ra = f(Gr, Pr) and Nu are used in analyzing the results. Simulated results from this investigation were validated with experimental results. The discrepancy in the results may be due to uncertainties, experimental errors, numerical errors, and the consequence of the lump parameter effect in the porous region modeling approach. This approach may be considered a unique means of estimating heat transfer characteristics in porous media.