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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.
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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
X-energy, Dow apply to build an advanced reactor project in Texas
Dow and X-energy announced today that they have submitted a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a proposed advanced nuclear project in Seadrift, Texas. The project could begin construction later this decade, but only if Dow confirms “the ability to deliver the project while achieving its financial return targets.”
Jinyong Feng (MIT), Tarek Frahi (Institut National des Sciences et Techniques Nucléaires), Emilio Baglietto (MIT)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 341-350
Turbulent mixing of different temperature fluids in T-junction geometries is a technically critical issue for the safe operation of power plants. Due to the strong flow deformation, the scale separation assumption is not respected locally, limiting the applicability of classic unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) models, which are unable to deliver the required accuracy in the prediction of temperature fluctuations. On the contrary, eddy resolving methods, and in particular large eddy simulation (LES), can provide reliable results at a computational cost that is still impracticable for the industry.
A robust second-generation URANS (2G-URANS) model was recently proposed at MIT, which aims at locally resolving complex flow structures. In the present paper, the performance of the structure-based (STRUCT) model is assessed specifically against low Reynolds number (??????=4,485) DNS data on a T-junction case. Velocity and temperature distributions in the mixing region are compared between URANS, STRUCT and LES solutions and the reference DNS data. The STRUCT model demonstrates significant advancement in the ability to model the thermal striping phenomena. Its application produces accurate predictions of the flow behavior on coarse URANS computational grids, with a large cost saving in comparison to LES.
