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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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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
Changhu Xing, Casey J. Jesse, Warren F. Jones, Maxine P. Johnson, Ann Marie Phillips, Theron D. Marshall
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 7 | July 2023 | Pages 1467-1478
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2153599
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Knowing the thickness of the oxide layer on the surface of aluminum fuel cladding is vitally important for predicting fuel temperature due to the low thermal conductivity of the oxide layer. Several correlation models for predicting oxide growth can be found in the literature. In previous research, the correlations were combined with heat transfer simulations in Abaqus, a finite element analysis code, to forecast the oxide growth. However, this approach requires heat transfer coefficients for modeling heat exchanges with the external flow field, and such coefficients were obtained through empirical equations. Since different empirical equations yield varying heat transfer coefficients, the cladding temperature and predicted oxide thickness both carry a high degree of uncertainty. This research develops a new approach that integrates the fluid flow, fluid and solid heat transfer, and oxide growth correlation(s) into a single computational fluid dynamics model. We demonstrate this approach’s ability to predict oxide development on the AFIP-7 plates during two Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) irradiation cycles. The projected oxide thickness falls within the experimental measurements taken during post irradiation examination.