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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott 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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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Bastien Faure, Pascal Archier, Jean-François Vidal, Laurent Buiron
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 192 | Number 1 | October 2018 | Pages 40-51
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1480190
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fast resolution of the Boltzmann transport equation over a nuclear reactor core presupposes the definition of homogenized and energy-collapsed cross sections. In modern sodium fast reactors that rely on heterogeneous core designs, anisotropy in the neutron propagation cannot be neglected, so three-dimensional (3D) models should be used to efficiently compute those effective cross sections. In this paper, the 2D/1D approximation is carried out to overcome computationally expensive 3D calculations while preserving consistent angular representations of the neutron flux. An iterative procedure is defined to solve the 2D/1D equations and produce coarse group homogenized cross sections that account for 3D transport effects. Accuracy of the algorithm is tested on a realistic model of the ASTRID core showing very good results against Monte Carlo simulations for all neutronic parameters (eigenvalue, sodium void worth, and fission map distribution).