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
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
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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Jul 2024
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
August 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Taking shape: Fusion energy ecosystems built with public-private partnerships
It’s possible to describe fusion in simple terms: heat and squeeze small atoms to get abundant clean energy. But there’s nothing simple about getting fusion ready for the grid.
Private developers, national lab and university researchers, suppliers, and end users working toward that goal are developing a range of complex technologies to reach fusion temperatures and pressures, confounded by science and technology gaps linked to plasma behavior; materials, diagnostics, and electronics for extreme environments; fuel cycle sustainability; and economics.
M. Pellegrini, K. Dolganov, L. E. Herranz, H. Bonneville, D. Luxat, M. Sonnenkalb, J. Ishikawa, J. H. Song, R. O. Gauntt, L. Fernandez Moguel, F. Payot, Y. Nishi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 196 | Number 2 | November 2016 | Pages 198-210
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT16-63
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Great East Japan earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011, at 14:46, and the subsequent tsunami led Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s) Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (NPS) beyond a design-basis accident. After the accident, the Japanese government and TEPCO compiled a roadmap toward an early resolution to the accident including, among the main activities, the employment and improvement of existing severe accident (SA) computer codes. In the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD/NEA), SA codes were developed after the accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 and widely employed to assess NPS status in the postulated SA conditions. Therefore, working plans have been set up with the country members of the OECD/NEA to apply existing SA codes to analyze the accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi NPS Units 1, 2, and 3 and support the decommissioning, constituting an international program named Benchmark Study of the Accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (BSAF).
The objectives of the BSAF project are to analyze the accident progression of Fukushima Daiichi NPS, to raise the understanding of SA phenomena, to contribute to the improvement of the methods and models of the SA codes, and to define the status of the distribution of debris in the reactor pressure vessels and primary containment vessels for decommissioning.
The present technical paper summarizes the achievements obtained through a comparison of the results, emphasizing the portions of the accident where all the participants reached a common consensus and identifying still open questions where future work should be directed. Consensus exists on the current condition of Unit 1, where a large fraction of the fuel is assumed to have relocated ex-vessel. On the other hand, larger uncertainties exist for Units 2 and 3, where in-vessel and ex-vessel scenarios produce a reasonable prediction of the accident progression.