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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Alexander Duenas, Qiao Wu, Wade Marcum
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 12 | December 2023 | Pages 1929-1938
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2232665
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique is employed for the measurement of the virtual mass of a submerged object, an important parameter in the two-fluid model, particularly so for reactor thermal-hydraulic and safety analyses. Instead of carrying out the measurement through traditional transient processes that mix steady-state drag, virtual mass force, and Basset force, a new PIV approach is developed for steady-state flows through the integration of the fluid kinetic energy around the object. The Basset force, an inseparable transient force in viscous flows, is eliminated in the new approach, making virtual mass quantification possible. This new method has been applied to the virtual mass measurement of a solid cylinder, and although the measurement uncertainty from the flow’s random fluctuations is substantial, the results are very encouraging. The results suggest that the existence of drag force in viscous flow affects the virtual mass, as the flow field is different from the ideal potential flow. When the measurement method was applied to the quantification of air bubbles, no reliable data were obtained due to complications from bubble lateral motions and deformation. Further study is needed for the PIV method to be employed for bubble virtual mass force measurements under steady-state flow conditions.