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The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Chang H. Oh, Eung Soo Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 1 | January 2013 | Pages 68-80
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 14th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-14) / Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15757
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Idaho National Laboratory has conducted air-ingress experiments as part of a campaign to validate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations for very high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (VHTR) analysis. An isothermal test loop was designed to recreate exchange or stratified flow that occurs in the lower plenum of VHTR after a break in the primary loop allows helium to leak out and reactor building air to enter the reactor core. The experiment was designed to measure stratified flow in the inlet pipe connecting to the lower plenum of the General Atomics gas turbine-modular helium reactor (GT-MHR). Instead of helium and air, brine and sucrose were used as heavy fluids, and water was used as the lighter fluid to create, using scaling laws, the appropriate flow characteristics of the lower plenum immediately after depressurization. These results clearly indicate that stratified flow is established even for very small density differences.Corresponding CFD results were validated with the experimental data. A grid sensitivity study on CFD models was also performed using the Richardson extrapolation and the grid convergence index method for the numerical accuracy of CFD calculations. The calculated current speed showed very good agreement with the experimental data, indicating that current CFD methods are suitable for simulating density gradient stratified flow phenomena in an air-ingress accident.