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Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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!
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
M. D. Hageman, D. L. Sadowski, M. Yoda, S. I. Abdel-Khalik
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 228-232
Divertor & High Heat Flux Components | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-232
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The helium-cooled plate-type divertor can reduce the number of divertor modules while accommodating heat fluxes q" up to 10 MW/m2 incident on tungsten-alloy armor. Dynamically similar experimental studies were performed to evaluate the thermal performance of variants of this divertor design at conditions that spanned the prototypical operating Reynolds number Re of 3.3 × 104. In the studies, a jet of air issuing from 0.5 mm and 2 mm wide slots impinged on and cooled a heated planar surface 2 mm away from the slot, then flowed through either a 2 mm wide channel or an array of cylindrical pin fins. The studies indicate that the fins, which increase the cooled surface area by a factor of 3.76, increase the effective heat transfer coefficient (HTC) by as much as 160% at a relatively modest increase in pressure drop of less than 40%.These experimental results were used to determine the thermal performance of the actual plate design with helium cooling under prototypical conditions. Although the benefit of the fins is reduced because the fin efficiency decreases as the HTC increases, the predictions suggest that the fins could increase the maximum q" that can be accommodated by this design to ~18 MW/m2. Alternatively, for a given heat flux (e.g. 10 MW/m2), adding fins could allow operation of the divertor at lower coolant flow rates, and hence pumping powers.