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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
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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
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
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.