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.
Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2025
Nuclear Technology
June 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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
Chao Fang, Liangzhi Cao, Hongchun Wu, Kang Li
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 5 | May 2022 | Pages 526-543
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.2011667
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a stabilized finite element method (FEM) and a spherical harmonics method to discretize the space and angle of the Boltzmann transport equation. The FEM is based on the subgrid-scale (SGS) model, which decomposes the unknowns into resolvable scale and SGS with an approximation for the SGS and then embeds it into a resolvable scale formulation, which yields a stabilized variational formula with only a resolvable scale. In this method, the SGS is identified as the residual of the flux, which represents the indistinguishable high-frequency component. This method is characterized by a residual equation proposed on the subgrid, thus reflecting the relationship between the residual of the flux and the residual of the source. A simple assumption is proposed that the residual of the flux is the scaling of the residual of the source. The scaling parameter is identified as a stabilization parameter, and it takes the inverse of the norm of the transport operator. This method has been verified by various benchmark problems, and the numerical results show that it has high accuracy, stability, and void applicability.