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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Securing the advanced reactor fleet
Physical protection accounts for a significant portion of a nuclear power plant’s operational costs. As the U.S. moves toward smaller and safer advanced reactors, similar protection strategies could prove cost prohibitive. For tomorrow’s small modular reactors and microreactors, security costs must remain appropriate to the size of the reactor for economical operation.
Xingang Zhao, Koroush Shirvan, Yingwei Wu, Mujid S. Kazimi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 196 | Number 3 | December 2016 | Pages 553-567
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT16-45
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With the objective of providing long-term energy supply via actinide breeding and burning, the next-generation boiling water reactor (BWR) design, the Hitachi’s resource-renewable BWR (RBWR), has been proposed. Unlike a traditional square lattice BWR fuel bundle, the RBWR bundles are shorter with hexagonal tight lattice arrangement and heterogeneous axial fuel zoning. The RBWR’s different core geometry combined with the higher power-to-flow ratio and void fraction necessitates the reexamination of the standard BWR thermal-hydraulic models.
For the prediction of dryout, the previously derived best-estimate empirical correlation showed significant scatter when compared to experimental data within its calibration database. In this work, the correlation is further calibrated and improved by supplementing tight bundle data with relevant critical power data for tubes and annuli to better quantify the effects of various parameters and by incorporating subchannel-level results to account for intra-assembly flow mixing. Another approach using the mechanistic three-field model is also investigated, and the minimum critical power ratio of the RBWR design is evaluated.
For the prediction of void fraction, measurements and the three-field model in annular flow regime reveal that the common drift flux approaches tend to overestimate the void fraction at small hydraulic diameters. The void fraction dependence on hydraulic diameter below 10 mm requires further experimentation and high-fidelity mechanistic simulations.