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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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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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.
Raciel de la Torre Valdés, Juan Luis François (Univ of Mexico), Pedro Morales, Lázaro García (Higher Inst of Technology and Applied Sciences)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 1066-1079
Intermediate heat exchangers are one of the most critical devices in the safety of facilities with very high temperature nuclear reactors. In this application, the printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) design has shown the greatest advantages in terms of heat transfer, compactness and structural strength. In this work, a thermal-hydraulic model of the zigzag channels PCHE was developed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques. The Nusselt number and the Fanning friction factor obtained from the CFD model was validated by comparison with correlations published by other authors and found by experimental data. Four geometric parameters of zigzag channels such as: zigzag length, zigzag angle, zigzag radius and zigzag phase-shift were chosen to optimize the PCHE design. With this in view, the model was set up with three channels for each cold and hot fluid, achieving a good accuracy. To consider the interaction among parameters with a reduced computing time, the Taguchi method was used to reduce the quantity of analyzed geometric designs. The zigzag angle was found like the most important geometric parameter in the thermal-hydraulic performance of the PCHE. The maximum value of the Nusselt number had the maximum value of zigzag angle and the minimum friction factor had the minimum value of zigzag angle. This is caused by the increment of the real length of the channels and the appearance of reverse flow zones for higher angles.