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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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!
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June 2025
Nuclear Technology
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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.
Kazuo Takino, Kazuteru Sugino, Kenji Yokoyama (JAEA), Tomoyuki Jin (NESI Inc.), Shigeo Ohki (JAEA)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1214-1220
Since next-generation fast reactors aim to achieve a higher core discharge burn-up than that of the conventional ones, nuclear design methods need to refine. In this study, we investigated the effect that the analysis conditions exhibit on the accuracy of estimations of the burn-up nuclear characteristics of next-generation fast reactors. Suitable analysis schemes and conditions that maximize the estimation accuracy, while maintaining a low computational cost, were investigated in this study.
We performed core burn-up survey calculations under several analysis conditions. In the survey calculations, we calculated the criticality, burn-up reactivity, control rod worth, breeding ratio, assembly-wise power distribution, maximum linear heat rate, sodium void reactivity, and Doppler coefficient for the equilibrium operation cycles. The accuracy of the low-cost calculations was evaluated by measuring the agreements with the referential detailed conditions.