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
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Elia Merzari, Hisashi Ninokata, Sheng Wang, Emilio Baglietto
Nuclear Technology | Volume 165 | Number 3 | March 2009 | Pages 313-320
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A4104
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The present work considers simulation of free-surface vortices by means of computational fluid dynamics. The issue is relevant for the design of sodium-cooled fast breeder reactors (FBRs). In fact, the eventual entrainment of gas in the reactor core of an FBR may cause abnormal operation condition because of disturbed reactivity.The foci of this work are turbulence modeling and free-surface modeling. Two different approaches are tested in the benchmark case of Moriya et al.: single-phase simulation (through large eddy simulation and detached eddy simulation methodology) and two-phase simulation (combining a volume-of-fluid method with turbulence modeling). Results are in excellent agreement with the experiment for the circumferential velocity in both cases if the grid adopted is sufficiently fine near the vortex core. Through additional grid refinement it is possible to correctly reproduce the shape of the vortex dimple. The code employed is STAR-CD 4.0.