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
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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
G7 pledges support for nuclear at Italy meeting
The Group of Seven (G7) recommitted its support for nuclear energy in the countries that opt to use it at a Ministerial Meeting on Climate in Italy last month.
In a statement following the April meeting, the group committed to support multilateral efforts to strengthen the resilience of nuclear supply chains, referencing the goal set by 25 countries during last year’s COP28 climate conference in Dubai to triple global nuclear generating capacity by 2050.
H. Guo, P. Sciora, T. Kooyman, L. Buiron, G. Rimpault
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 11 | November 2019 | Pages 1433-1446
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1620054
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Generation IV reactors are expected to exhibit significant safety improvements compared to current ones. In sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs), fuel melting during transient over power (TOP) should be avoided as this is identified as a relatively frequent accident. Among these TOP accidents, a control rod withdrawal (CRW) accident is the most likely to happen and its impact depends on the magnitude of the inserted reactivity. This paper presents the required excess reactivity for different core designs and the way to reduce the reactivity inserted during a CRW transient through the use of burnable poisons (BPs).
After evaluating various candidate materials, it appears that a low-enrichment boron carbide combined with a zirconium hydride moderator is the most promising BP for use in sodium fast spectrum reactors. Burnable poisons are located in pins of particular assemblies, which are in fixed positions in the core over the entire fuel cycle.
Four core designs with different loading schemes and BPs are investigated. Core designs with BPs display low reactivity loss over the fuel cycle and thus limit the required initial excess reactivity of the core to compensate with control rods.
Another constraint comes from the core power distribution, which should remain almost stable through the fuel cycle. This core power distribution can be modified by a suitable loading of BP assemblies. However, as their positions are fixed over the fuel cycle, they can compensate only part of the local flux tilt. These BP core designs slightly improve the reactivity feedback coefficients as they contain light materials slowing down neutrons. It is finally shown that a CRW transient with BPs reduces significantly the maximal fuel centerline temperature compared to a design without BPs and that a fuel melting during a CRW transient is avoided in the large SFR core.