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 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Jianan Lu, Jiong Guo, Tomasz Kozlowski, Fu Li
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 131-146
Technical Paper – Selected papers from NURETH 2017 | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1504545
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor–Pebble Bed Module (HTR-PM) is a large-scale complex system that includes reactor core, steam generator, helium circulator, and other important components. When integrating these components, coupling problems such as multiphysics problem, multicircuit problem, multiscale problem, and multimodule problem arise in the numerical simulation. The HTR-PM multicircuit system comprises the primary circuit and secondary circuit, which are simulated by two independent codes and coupled by the interface in the once-through steam generator. Although time-consuming, Picard iteration is a feasible and convenient coupling method to integrate two components because oversolving in the early stages of the iteration causes strong fluctuation between circuits. To address this problem, optimization of the maximum subiteration number and convergence precision have been implemented to improve the efficiency and numerical stability of the Picard iteration. The Dynamic Residual Balance method, an improved version of the Residual Balance method, is proposed to prevent oversolving inside the subiterations. It takes into consideration fluctuation between circuits, and this method is robust in a wide range of cases. Moreover, the nonlinear preconditioned Jacobian-Free Newton-Krylov method, which has less fluctuation between circuits than Picard iteration, is a coupling scheme that updates all the solution variables from the primary circuit and the secondary circuit simultaneously. Outstanding convergence and efficiency can be obtained by implementing the proper preconditioner in this HTR-PM multicircuit problem. The downside is that it requires significant modification to the legacy codes.