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
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
Materials in Nuclear Energy Systems (MiNES 2023)
December 10–14, 2023
New Orleans, LA|New Orleans Marriott
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
Dec 2023
Jul 2023
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
December 2023
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2023
Latest News
ENEC inks deal with Kazatomprom, MOUs with TerraPower, GEH
On the margins of the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, UAE, this week, Barakah nuclear plant owner Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) signed its first commercial uranium fuel supply contract with Kazatomprom, in addition to memorandums of understanding with two U.S.-based advanced reactor developers—TerraPower and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH).
Dennis L. Youchison, Alex M. Melin, Arnold Lumsdaine, Charles R. Schaich, Gregory R. Hanson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 3 | October 2017 | Pages 324-330
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1333855
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The electron cyclotron heating system (ECH) on ITER uses 24 evacuated microwave transmission lines carrying up to 1.4 MW of power each at 170 GHz to provide resonance heating of electrons in the ITER plasma and to enable plasma current drive. A critically important component in this system is the microwave switch that allows the microwaves to be directed from the gyrotrons to either dummy loads or between launchers in the upper and equatorial ports of the ITER tokamak while maintaining the vacuum integrity of the transmission lines. A moveable, water-cooled CuCrZr mirror is used to redirect the microwave transmission between two orthogonal waveguides.
In this article we describe the optimized design of the mirror cooling passages produced by computational fluid dynamics analysis using ANSYS CFX with k-ε and k-ω shear stress transport turbulence models, and verify that the design parameters for mass flow rate, inlet temperature and pressure are adequate for good thermomechanical performance. Non-uniform heating of the mirror face from the incident microwaves induces deflections that should be less than 25 microns to meet the integrated transmission line efficiency specification. In the current 1.4 MW switch design, 0.03 kg/s of 36°C water at 10 bar inlet pressure can remove the 2660 W of ohmic heating in the mirror produced by the elliptical polarization power and maintain the surface temperature below 150°C. The water delta-T is 21°C with a 0.5 bar pressure drop in the mirror. The maximum predicted displacement in the center of the mirror face is less than 25 μm.