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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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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.
E. A. Schneider, U. B. Phathanapirom
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 3 | March 2016 | Pages 416-429
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-6
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper introduces VEGAS, a lightweight and fast-executing fuel cycle simulator primarily intended to augment higher-fidelity fuel cycle simulators. VEGAS can act as a preconditioner as well as a platform for implementing endogenous decision making within these simulators. In preconditioner mode, VEGAS offers an iterative method for accelerating the convergence of fuel cycle optimization problems while ensuring that material balance and other constraints are met. The methodology utilized by VEGAS, particularly its mass balance and reactor deployment algorithms, is presented here. Unique to the VEGAS simulator is a rollback feature that undoes reactor build decisions if material balance constraints are violated. Included in the VEGAS code is an economics package, also documented here, that calculates the evolving levelized cost of electricity. Benchmark comparisons against the VISION (Verifiable Fuel Cycle Simulation Model) simulator are also presented, along with an example of VEGAS’s preconditioning capability in which the objective is to achieve a target system transuranics inventory while installing as little reprocessing capacity as possible.