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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.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
C. P. Marcel, M. Rohde, T. H. J. J. Van der Hagen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 164 | Number 2 | November 2008 | Pages 232-244
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A4022
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The stability performance of the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) is studied with the downscaled GENESIS facility. The GENESIS design is based on fluid-to-fluid modeling and includes an artificial void reactivity feedback system for simulating the neutronic-thermal-hydraulic coupling. The experiments show that the ESBWR thermal-hydraulic oscillatory mode is very stable at nominal conditions, exhibiting a decay ratio DR = 0.12 and a remarkably low resonance frequency fres = 0.11 Hz. This result indicates a static pressure head-driven phenomenon since this frequency corresponds well to typical frequencies found for density wave oscillations traveling through the core plus chimney sections. For the reactor-kinetic oscillatory mode, we found a decay ratio DR = 0.30 and a resonance frequency fres = 0.75 Hz. This corresponds well to density wave oscillations traveling through the core indicating the instability mechanism is driven by the interplay between the core friction and the neutronic response due to void changes in the core. By comparing these results with those obtained with the TRACG computational code, it was found that they agree very well. In addition, the stability performance of the thermal-hydraulic and the reactor-kinetic mode is investigated for a wide range of conditions, confirming the existence of large margins to instabilities of the ESBWR design.
