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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The deadline arrives: Checking in on the Reactor Pilot Program
On May 23, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the DOE,” which instructed the Department of Energy to create a Reactor Pilot Program (RPP)—a new system in which companies could pursue DOE authorization to build and test their first-of-a-kind nuclear technologies. EO 14301 set an ambitious goal for that program: three reactors achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.
J. Michael Doster, Jeremy M. Kauffman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 132 | Number 1 | May 1999 | Pages 90-104
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE99-A2051
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Drift-flux models can be used to describe two-phase-flow systems when explicit representation of the relative phase motion is not required. In these models, relative phase velocity is described by flow-regime-dependent, semiempirical models. Numerical stability of the mixture drift-flux equations is examined for different semi-implicit time discretization schemes. Representative flow-regime-dependent drift-flux correlations are considered, and analytic stability limits are derived based on these correlations. The analytic stability limits are verified by numerical experiments run in the vicinity of the predicted stable boundaries. It is shown that the stability limits are strong functions of the time-level specification and functional form chosen for the relative phase velocity. It is also shown that the mixture Courant limit normally associated with these methods is insufficient for ensuring a stable numerical scheme.