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
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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
H. J. Uitslag-Doolaard, K. Zwijsen, F. Roelofs, M. M. Stempniewicz
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 10 | October 2023 | Pages 2543-2560
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2148809
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Increasing the computational power enables the nuclear community to combine existing knowledge on the variety of different physical phenomena that take place in reactors and to develop tools that can simulate these combined, interacting phenomena simultaneously. This includes phenomena related to structural mechanics, fluid dynamics, and reactor physics among others. Coupling different codes developed specifically for the analysis of separate phenomenon is currently a topic high on the research and development agenda of the international community.
Based on the experience of successfully computing the dissymmetric benchmark in the Phénix reactor by coupling the system thermal-hydraulic (STH) code SPECTRA to the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code CFX in the H2020 SESAME project, the Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG) is currently developing the code-coupling tool myMUSCLE: MultiphYsics MUltiscale Simulation CoupLing Environment. MyMUSCLE is an independent, external, Fortran-based code that arranges the efficient and robust coupling of different codes. It aims at being flexible with respect to the codes being coupled, i.e., commercial and open-source codes, while having a single coupling tool that enhances quality assurance. It is currently set up to couple SPECTRA as a STH code to CFX, Fluent, STAR-CCM+, or OpenFOAM as a CFD code. This paper presents the proof of principle and first verification of the myMUSCLE tool under development by applying it to multiscale thermal-hydraulic applications.
First, a flow through a pipe is modeled as proof of principle for explicit coupling at a single coupling interface. Second, in preparation for modeling liquid-metal-cooled fast reactors, a piping system with a pool with natural convection is modeled. The results of the multiscale calculations show good agreement among the different coupled CFD codes. Finally, the preparations for simulating the TALL-3D experiment, used for generating data for validation of simulation tools for liquid-metal pools, are presented.
