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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
College students help develop waste-measuring device at Hanford
A partnership between Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) and Washington State University has resulted in the development of a device to measure radioactive and chemical tank waste at the Hanford Site. WRPS is the contractor at Hanford for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
Bin Zhang, Mengwei Zhang, Cheng Peng, Jianqiang Shan, Baowen Yang, Yonggang Cao, Lixia Ren
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 115-130
Technical Paper - Selected papers from NURETH 2017 | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1514177
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear reactor severe accidents can lead to the release of a large amount of radioactive material and cause immense disaster to the environment. Based on a heat conduction model, the DEBRIS-HT program for analyzing the heat transfer characteristics of a debris bed after a severe accident of a sodium-cooled fast reactor was developed. The basic methodology of the DEBRIS-HT program is to simplify the complex energy transfer process in the debris bed to a simple heat transfer problem by solving the equivalent thermal conductivity in different situations. In this paper, the models of the DEBRIS-HT code are explained in detail. The comparison between the simulation and experimental results shows that the DEBRIS-HT program can correctly estimate the heat transfer process in the debris bed. In addition, the DEBRIS-HT code is applied to model the core catcher of the China fast reactor. The calculated dryout heat flux of the postulated accident, in which 100% of core melts and drops on the core catcher, agrees well with the prediction result of the Lipinski’s zero-dimensional model. And the error between them is about 10%. The calculated dependence of dryout heat flux on particle size is also in good consistence with the prediction by Lipinski’s zero-dimensional model. Then, the temperature distribution and the temperature excursion of the debris bed during a likely accident are analyzed, which provides significant reference to the severe accident analysis.