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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Igor A. Bolotnov
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 10 | October 2023 | Pages 1405-1413
Review Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2232222
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The significant progress in the last decade of high-resolution single- and two-phase flow simulations of reactor-relevant flows is summarized in this review paper. The rapid development of high-performance computing capabilities creates exciting opportunities to study complex reactor thermal-hydraulic phenomena. Today’s advances in thermal-hydraulic analysis, interface capturing simulations, and advanced data processing and analysis approaches will help pave the way to the next level of understanding of two-phase flow behavior in nuclear reactors.
This paper discusses two major topics: (1) a brief review of interface-capturing simulations in recent years and (2) several opportunities to advance these numerical research tools in the future. The first part discusses typical computational methods used for these simulations and provides some examples of past work, as well as computational cost estimates and affordability of such simulations for research and industrial applications. In the second part, some specific examples are discussed that could be analyzed using exascale supercomputers being designed and projected to be online in the next several years. New-generation methodologies are required to take full advantage of these capabilities to greatly enhance the scientific understanding of complex two-phase flow phenomena in various conditions relevant to industrial applications.