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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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
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.
X. Cheng
Nuclear Technology | Volume 154 | Number 1 | April 2006 | Pages 52-68
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3717
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the frame of the European PDS-XADS (Preliminary Design Study-EXperimental Accelerator-Driven System) project, two concepts of a subcritical reactor core cooled by liquid lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) were proposed. In this paper, the local thermal-hydraulic behavior of both LBE-cooled reactor-core concepts was analyzed. For this purpose, the MATRA subchannel analysis code (Multichannel Analyzer for Steady States and Transients in Rod Arrays) was selected, and modification was made for its applications to XADS conditions. Compared to the small-core concept, the large-core concept has a much lower hydraulic resistance, lower local coolant velocity, and lower temperatures of coolant and fuel pins. This enables the natural convection approach for removing reactor heat and for short-term realization of the core design using available technologies. The fuel assembly of the small-core concept has a tight configuration that leads to a high flow velocity and high pressure drop. The high power density of the small core results in high local temperatures of coolant, cladding, and fuel. Both coolant velocity and cladding temperature are such that special attention has to be paid to avoid corrosion and erosion damage of cladding materials. A parametric study shows that under the parameters considered, the mixing coefficient has the biggest effect on the coolant temperature distribution, whereas the cladding temperature is strongly affected by the selection of heat transfer correlations.