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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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.
A. John Arul, Parthkumar Rajendrabhai Patel, Darpan Krishnakumar Shukla
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 7 | July 2023 | Pages 1024-1039
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2175584
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Passive safety systems help to improve overall plant safety, reliability, and resilience. However, the real gain in the use of passive systems depends on the robustness of the design utilizing the passive process and the role of active elements, if any. In this paper, we propose a fan-controlled sodium-to-air heat exchanger (AHX) system design for a failsafe and passive decay heat removal (DHR) function in a pool-type sodium-cooled fast reactor. The proposed system uses a fan to control air flow and minimize heat loss during normal operation, and when the fan trips due to loss of power or a trip signal, DHR gets enabled in a failsafe mode. The system is analyzed with the help of a simplified one-dimensional model as well as with detailed computational fluid dynamics software. It is found from analysis that it is possible to control and maintain the air flow to about 4% to 5% of full flow, as in the case of conventional dampers, to minimize heat loss during normal reactor operation. The reliability of the proposed system is also analyzed and shows that the fan-controlled AHX-based decay heat removal system (DHRS) has a much better reliability compared to the conventional passive DHRS with active damper-dependent operation.