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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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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Latest News
Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Matthias Vanderhaegen, Alix Le Belguet
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 176 | Number 2 | February 2014 | Pages 115-137
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-99
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Sodium boiling phenomena in nuclear reactors have been reviewed in the context of the renewed interest in sodium-cooled fast reactors. This paper presents all properties that influence sodium boiling behavior, including thermodynamic and transport properties, as well as the typical composition of reactor-grade sodium, the surface wetting, radiative heat transfer properties, and noncondensable behavior. Starting from these properties, the tendency for high superheat is explained, together with the reasons that the problem of superheat can be neglected for reactor systems. The peculiar boiling behavior of sodium in assemblies is explained on the basis of the temperature profile. This leads us to conclude that a typical slug flow pattern prevails for sodium boiling. The boiling heat transfer for pool film boiling is also given, deducing that the critical heat flux phenomena for sodium boiling in reactor systems is mainly related to dryout and not to the departure from nucleate boiling. The correlations that exist for the minimum film-boiling temperature are discussed in light of their applicability to liquid sodium. Although there are already a large amount of data, gaps in the current understanding of sodium are highlighted.