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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Remembering Joseph M. Hendrie
Joseph M. Hendrie
To those of us who knew Joe, even prior to his appointment as chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is an understatement to say that he was a larger-than-life member of the nuclear science and technology enterprise. He was best known to the broader community for two major accomplishments: the design and construction of the High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR) at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the creation of the standard review plan (SRP) for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
In addition to the products of these endeavors becoming major fundaments to their respective communities, they were uniquely Joe. The safety analysis report for the HFBR was written essentially single-handedly by him. This was true of the SRP as well, which became the key safety review document for the NRC as it performed safety reviews for the growing number of power reactor applications in the United States. His deep technical knowledge of nuclear engineering and his extraordinary management skills made this possible.
Robert E. Henry, Michael Epstein, Hans K. Fauske
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 180 | Number 3 | July 2015 | Pages 312-334
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE14-90
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The mechanisms controlling an aluminum-water steam explosion and the possibility that a significant chemical reaction could be initiated have been debated for decades. This paper investigates the influence of hydrogen gas that is generated by the steam oxidation reaction. Most of this gas diffuses to the surface, but some diffuses into the molten metal. Analyses show that at elevated aluminum temperatures sufficient hydrogen is formed to saturate the diffusion layer propagating into the liquid metal, even considering that the hydrogen solubility increases significantly with temperature. If a steam explosion is initiated, the local rapid surface cooling would cause the dissolved hydrogen to become highly supersaturated, such that it would nucleate into high pressure gas bubbles within the locally cooled outer surface of the molten aluminum globules. This high pressure source would strip a thin molten layer, which has the thickness of the cooled thermal boundary, off of the surface as fine fragments that can oxidize explosively in the surrounding environment. Based on this mechanism, a methodology has been developed and found to be in agreement with the available large-scale data regarding (a) the conditions required for the occurrence of a significant chemical component in the explosion and (b) the energy releases that occur when a steam explosion initiates a chemical explosion.