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
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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
General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Xiaoming Yang , Ran Liu, Li Zhang (CAPE)
Proceedings | Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference (2018 PBNC) | San Francisco, CA, September 30-October 4, 2018 | Pages 30-33
A simplified model with lumped parameters for mass, momentum and energy governing equations is usually used for thermal-hydraulic analysis during severe accident of a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). In one of this kind of model, the flow in the flow path between two control volumes is usually simplified as one-dimensional pipe flow, and the extended expression of the Bernoulli Integral in the unsteady flow is used to solve the momentum governing equation correspondingly. It is noticed that the solution of the velocity in the flow field is very sensitive to the length of the streamline, so-called as inertia length introduced by the unsteady flow, corresponding to the inertia loss in the flow path.
Based on the theoretical model for the extended expression of the Bernoulli Integral in the unsteady flow, this paper shows the theoretical sensitivity analysis of the inertial length to the solution of the momentum governing equation firstly. According to the analysis, a sensitive study model for the inertia length was built by the thermal-hydraulic code, and the responses of the velocity, pressure and temperature versus different inertia lengths were studied. The results show that there is a slower time response of the fluid system states while the inertia length increases, and the thermal-hydraulic response is very sensitive to the inertia length of a flow path. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to choose the inertia length very carefully when dealing with the inertia response of the thermal-hydraulic system during severe accident analysis.