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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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A new ANSI/ANS standard for liquid metal fire protection published
ANSI/ANS-54.8-2025, Liquid Metal Fire Protection in LMR Plants, received approval from the American National Standards Institute on September 2 and is now available for purchase.
The 2025 edition is a reinvigoration of the withdrawn ANS-54.8-1988 of the same title. The Advanced Reactor Codes and Standards Collaborative (ARCSC) identified the need for a current version of the standard via an industry survey.
Typical liquid metal reactor designs use liquid sodium as the coolant for both the primary and intermediate heat-transport systems. In addition, liquid sodium and NaK (a mixture of sodium and potassium that is liquid at room temperature) are often used in auxiliary heat-removal systems. Since these liquid metals can react readily with oxygen, water, and other compounds, special precautions must be taken in the design, construction, testing, and maintenance of the sodium/NaK systems to ensure that the potential for leakage is very small.
C. B. Mills
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 13 | Number 4 | August 1962 | Pages 301-305
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26172
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The complete spatial separation of moderator and uranium fuel bearing regions are shown by experiment to result in critical reactors with low critical mass and relatively uniform fissioning density. Studies of several of these experiments to establish the accuracy of a numerical method of calculation (SNG) for this class of problems show good correspondence between theory and experiment. This method is then used for a useful survey of critical mass and U235 atomic density as a function of geometry for the best moderators, D2O and Be.