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
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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.”
Siyang Huang, Qiqi Yan, Wenxi Tian, G. H. Su, Suizheng Qiu (Xi’an Jiaotong Univ)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 44-56
In the nuclear power system, the critical heat flux (CHF) plays a crucial role in the reactor safety analysis. When CHF occurs, it will cause a sudden increase in the surface temperature, which would lead to the failure of fuel claddings and damage of the core. Considering the cross flow between neighboring channels, spacer grids and mixing vanes in the fuel assembly, the local flow conditions and the geometry of the flow channels make the prediction of CHF more complicated. In this paper, the departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) type CHF in rod bundle is investigated based on the coupled analysis of the subchannel method and a CHF mechanism model, i.e. the liquid sublayer dryout model. The liquid sublayer dryout model assumes that there is a thin liquid sublayer underneath a vapor blanket formed by the coalescence of small bubbles near the heated wall. The dryout of this sublayer will be regarded as the CHF occurrence. In present research, the homogeneous flow model is adopted in the subchannel analysis code to predict the local flow conditions for the rod bundle flow subchannels, which will be used as the input parameters for the liquid sublayer dryout model. In order to verify the method above, the predicted results are compared with the CHF Look-Up Table 2006 (LUT-2006) and the predicted results are in good agreement with the data in LUT-2006. In addition, the effects of rod bundle inlet subcooling, mass flux, heated length and motion conditions on CHF are analyzed.