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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.
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!
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Strong performances across the board
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Another year, another stellar performance by America’s nuclear plants. We’ve come to expect high capacity factors, and it’s a credit to the men and women of the profession. They’ve made routine something that was unimaginable not so long ago.
The decadal challenge for the nuclear enterprise now is to maintain this high level of operational excellence for the current fleet, while at the same time ushering in a new generation of technologies at scale. It will be a big job—but one that seems more and more likely with each passing day.
J. R. Fagan, J. O. Mingle
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 18 | Number 4 | April 1964 | Pages 443-447
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A18762
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The standard analytical approaches to calculating the maximum temperature and surface -heat-flow rate in nuclear reactor fuel plates over-estimates both of these quantities due to the omission of conduction along the axis of the plate. The more general problem, including axial conduction, has been solved for fuel plates in which the clad and meat can be assumed to have the same thermal properties. Calculations made for a natural-circulation reactor show over-estimates of the maximum surface heat flow rate of 4.5 percent and of the maximum temperature rise of 4.8 percent. The error is minimized for systems having a large convection heat-transfer coefficient and will be less than 0.5 percent for most power reactor systems.
