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Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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
Shoichiro Okita, Yuji Fukaya, Atsushi Sakon, Tadafumi Sano, Yoshiyuki Takahashi, Hironobu Unesaki
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 8 | August 2023 | Pages 2251-2257
Technical Note from: PHYSOR 2022 | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2087836
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper, integral experiments on a graphite-moderated core were conducted at the B-rack of the Kyoto University Criticality Assembly in order to develop an integral experiment database for the applicability of data assimilation techniques to the neutronic design of a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. The calculation/experiment-1 (C/E-1)values for the keff values at critical cores with the major nuclear data libraries, such as JENDL-4.0, JENDL-5, JEFF-3.2, ENDF/B-VII.1, and ENDF/B-VIII.0, were calculated for the core. Of these, the keff values with JENDL-5 with thermal neutron scattering law data for 30% porous graphite showed the best agreement with experimental values within 0.02% accuracy.
