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
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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
May 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Steam is a sign of cooling system function . . . at ITER
Steam from one of ITER’s ten induced-draft cooling cells offers visual confirmation of a successful cooling system test, the ITER organization announced April 30. ITER’s cooling system features 60 kilometers of piping with pumps, filters, and heat exchangers that can pull water through at up to 14 cubic meters per second. Once fully operational, two cooling loops—one to remove the heat generated by the plasma in the ITER tokamak and one for its supporting infrastructure—will be capable of extracting up to 1,200 MW of heat.
Odmaa Sambuu, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 177 | Number 1 | May 2014 | Pages 97-110
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-22
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the past decade, greater emphasis has been placed in nuclear reactor design on passive systems for the removal of decay heat. This study focuses on the passive safety feature of decay heat removal in modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs). The availability of this feature depends largely on reactor dimensions, power, and initial core temperature. It is assumed that the initial temperatures of fuel, graphite matrix, and coolant are the same, and so are represented by the initial core temperature, which is uniformly distributed throughout the core. However, little is known in general about the relationships among the parameters mentioned above or on the ability of the core to passively reject decay heat. To obtain a general understanding of the relationship of those parameters in HTGRs, analyses were performed, estimating the effects of initial core and soil temperatures and of the presence of structural materials on the maximum core temperature, allowable power, and size. Appropriate sizes were evaluated for reactors with given powers having various maximum power densities and operating at different initial core temperatures. Criticality and burnup analyses for the proposed reactors were performed, and it was found that all reactors with 20 wt% of uranium enrichment can be critical for over 16 years of operation.