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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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
El Salvador: Looking to nuclear
In 2022, El Salvador’s leadership decided to expand its modest, mostly hydro- and geothermal-based electricity system, which is supported by expensive imported natural gas and diesel generation. They chose to use advanced nuclear reactors, preferably fueled by thorium-based fuels, to power their civilian efforts. The choice of thorium was made to inform the world that the reactor program was for civilian purposes only, and so they chose a fuel that was plentiful, easy to source and work with, and not a proliferation risk.
Xiong Gao, Jamie B. Coble, A. C. Hines, Belle R. Upadhyaya, J. Wesley Hines
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 11 | November 2021 | Pages 1725-1745
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1831873
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear power plants (NPPs) require accurate measurement of mass flow rates. Advanced flowmeters have been widely applied in several current industries; however, the operating environment in NPPs is especially harsh because of high temperature, high radiation, and extremely corrosive conditions. Several of the advanced reactor designs, such as liquid sodium pool reactors and integral small modular reactors, do not have conventional primary piping systems. These designs require an alternative method to accurately measure primary flow. Cross-correlation function (CCF) flow estimation can estimate the flow velocity indirectly without any specific instruments for flow measurement. The target flow rate is derived by the delay time between two sensors located near each other along the flow direction. Temperature sensors are a common choice for this function because they are reliable, economical, and widely used in various industries. The delay time is inferred by applying the CCF to the signals collected from two or more sensors. CCF flow estimation can be performed in any structure of the flow region, not limited to pipes. One challenge for the CCF flow estimation is that the accuracy of the flow measurement is mainly determined by the inherent local process variation, which is small compared to the uncorrelated noise. To differentiate the process variations from the uncorrelated noise, this paper demonstrates periodic fluid injection of a different temperature before the sensors to amplify common process variation. The feasibility and accuracy of this method have been investigated through a physical flow loop experiment designed to verify the CCF flow estimation using fluid injection. Several parameters must be selected when designing the fluid injection CCF measurement system, such as the distance between the fluid injection site and the sensors, the injection period, and the injection flow rate. A series of tests was conducted to investigate whether these parameters were related to the accuracy of the CCF flow estimation and to identify appropriate values for these parameters for different flow regimes. The results show that the fluid injection method improves the flow measurement performance, and the appropriate design of flow injection and measurement geometry produces better flow characterization performance over a range of flow rates.