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
Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS 2023)
May 7–11, 2023
Idaho Falls, ID|Snake River Event Center
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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Latest News
The blossoming of cooperation between the U.S. and Canada
The United States and Canadian nuclear industries used to be an example of how two independent teams of engineers facing an identical problem—making electricity from uranium—could come up with completely different answers. In the 1950s, Canada began designing a reactor with tubes, heavy water, and natural uranium, while in the U.S. it was big pots of light water and enriched uranium.
But 80 years later, there is a remarkable convergence. The North American push for a new generation of nuclear reactors, mostly small modular reactors (SMRs), is becoming binational, with U.S. and Canadian companies seeking markets and regulatory certification on both sides of the border and in many cases sourcing key components in the other country.
Matthias Vanderhaegen, Alix Le Belguet
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 176 | Number 2 | February 2014 | Pages 115-137
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-99
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Sodium boiling phenomena in nuclear reactors have been reviewed in the context of the renewed interest in sodium-cooled fast reactors. This paper presents all properties that influence sodium boiling behavior, including thermodynamic and transport properties, as well as the typical composition of reactor-grade sodium, the surface wetting, radiative heat transfer properties, and noncondensable behavior. Starting from these properties, the tendency for high superheat is explained, together with the reasons that the problem of superheat can be neglected for reactor systems. The peculiar boiling behavior of sodium in assemblies is explained on the basis of the temperature profile. This leads us to conclude that a typical slug flow pattern prevails for sodium boiling. The boiling heat transfer for pool film boiling is also given, deducing that the critical heat flux phenomena for sodium boiling in reactor systems is mainly related to dryout and not to the departure from nucleate boiling. The correlations that exist for the minimum film-boiling temperature are discussed in light of their applicability to liquid sodium. Although there are already a large amount of data, gaps in the current understanding of sodium are highlighted.
