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
September 2026
Nuclear Technology
August 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
In transition: Commercializing fusion power
Commercial fusion power is closer than ever. There are now around 30 U.S. fusion companies, several of which claim to be on track to connect to the grid as early as the 2030s.
Tokamak and laser inertial confinement approaches benefit from decades of research at facilities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and ITER, with alternative concepts including stellarator, magnetic mirror, and Z-pinch confinement also making notable progress as private and government funding for fusion increases.
A. K. Agrawal, J. G. Guppy, I. K. Madni, V. Quan, W. L. Weaver III, J. W. Yang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 64 | Number 2 | October 1977 | Pages 480-491
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27384
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The transient simulation of a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR) plant requires (a) modeling of all processes that may be encountered and (b) the development of numerical methods to solve them. All models needed for the thermohydraulic simulation of the whole plant are formulated in this paper. We examine numerical techniques required to solve the governing equations, which are hyperbolic and parabolic partial-differential equations and ordinary differential equations. It appears that the implicit (or partially implicit) scheme is most suitable to meet both the stability and accuracy requirements. A new approach, labeled as the multistep scheme, to efficiently solve the entire system is then presented and illustrated through an example. For a simplified test problem, the multistep scheme has been found to be more efficient (by a factor of 2 to 3) than the commonly used single-step methods. This effort has resulted in the creation of a system transient simulation code, called SSC, for LMFBRs.