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Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Frank McGirt, Martin Becker
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 39 | Number 1 | January 1970 | Pages 56-66
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A21171
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The object of this investigation is to obtain qualitative and quantitative understanding of reentrant hole (or extraction channel) effects in pulsed thermal- and fast-neutron experimental assemblies. The calculational model used assumes slab geometry for the unperturbed (without the hole) situation and considers cylindrical reentrant holes of various diameters and depths. The two-dimensional nature of the hole is represented by a wall-streaming term which is used as a boundary condition for a reduced effective slab. The effective slab geometry is obtained by reducing the thickness of the original slab by an amount equal to the depth of the reentrant hole. The validity of this important simplification is confirmed by results of two-dimensional discrete ordinates transport calculations in which the reentrant hole is introduced explicitly. A second basic assumption used to simplify the numerical calculations is that the flux along the walls of the reentrant hole is adequately represented by the unperturbed flux. This approximation is judged valid by the success of the method in predicting experimental results. The analytical procedure is applied numerically using discrete Sn transport theory. Solutions are obtained from a code system which makes use of a standard production program DTF-IV as a subroutine for performing unperturbed and perturbed effective slab calculations. The calculational model yielded good predictions of the distorted fluxes for reentrant hole experiments performed on water at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. For fast neutron spectra, the model predicted distortions (particularly at high energies) which were significant but not large enough to limit the viability of the experiment.