ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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!
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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Tsung-Kuang Yeh, Mei-Ya Wang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 160 | Number 1 | September 2008 | Pages 98-107
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE07-38
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to increase the power generation efficiency of nuclear reactors, the utilities of light water reactors have opted for power uprates in the past decades. Upon a power uprate, the power density and coolant flow rate of a nuclear reactor would change immediately, followed by water chemistry variations due to enhanced radiolysis of water and shortened coolant residence times. If the boiling water reactor (BWR) has adopted hydrogen water chemistry (HWC) for corrosion mitigation, the optimal hydrogen injection rate may thus require a proper adjustment. Because of limited measurable water chemistry data, a well-developed computer code DEMACE was used in the current study to investigate the impact of various power levels (ranging from 100 to 120%) on the redox species concentrations and electrochemical corrosion potential (ECP) behavior of components in the primary coolant circuit of a domestic BWR operating under either normal water chemistry or HWC. Our analyses indicated that the chemical species concentrations and the ECP did not vary monotonically with increases in reactor power level at a fixed feedwater hydrogen concentration. In particular, the upper plenum and the upper downcomer regions exhibited uniquely higher ECPs at 104 and 114% power levels than those at the other evaluated power levels. Accordingly, the impact of power uprate on the HWC effectiveness in a BWR is expected to vary from location to location and eventually from plant to plant because of different degrees of radiolysis and physical dimensions.