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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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
Empowering the next generation: ANS’s newest book focuses on careers in nuclear energy
A new career guide for the nuclear energy industry is now available: The Nuclear Empowered Workforce by Earnestine Johnson. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience across 16 nuclear facilities, Johnson offers a practical, insightful look into some of the many career paths available in commercial nuclear power. To mark the release, Johnson sat down with Nuclear News for a wide-ranging conversation about her career, her motivation for writing the book, and her advice for the next generation of nuclear professionals.
When Johnson began her career at engineering services company Stone & Webster, she entered a field still reeling from the effects of the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, nearly 15 years earlier. Her hiring cohort was the first group of new engineering graduates the company had brought on since TMI, a reflection of the industry-wide pause in nuclear construction. Her first long-term assignment—at the Millstone site in Waterford, Conn., helping resolve design issues stemming from TMI—marked the beginning of a long and varied career that spanned positions across the country.
Satish Kumar Dhurandhar, S. L. Sinha, Shashi Kant Verma
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 10 | October 2024 | Pages 1965-1983
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2280350
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A grid spacer with a vane is an influential segment in reactor fuel channels. A vane produces significant effects on flow mixing and augmentation of heat transfer in subchannnels. The purpose of this work was to do a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis on the effects of a grid spacer vane on the thermal-hydraulic performance of fluid in a 5×5 fuel channel. A square array of a 5×5 fuel channel was used for this analysis with a pitch–to–rod diameter ratio of 1.33 and a blockage ratio of the grid spacer of 0.16. The relative study was made for the thermal-hydraulic performance among a grid spacer with a vane, a grid spacer (without a vane), and without a grid spacer (bare bundle). Analyses were made for fluid pressure of 15.5 MPa, inlet temperature of 583 K, and velocity of 4.74 m/s. The SST k-ω and RNG k-ε turbulence models were used to analyze flow phenomena and thermal performance. CFD results were validated with experiment data and were also compared with correlations proposed by researchers. The results were analyzed by different methods such as data curves, streamlines, and vector and contour plots. The results show that the strong characteristics of swirl flow in subchannels cause a greater mixing rate of turbulent flow, which hence improves heat transfer performance. The swirl ratio was observed maximum close downstream to a grid spacer with a vane. Grid spacer effects on heat transfer were noticed from z/Dh = 0 to 20 in downstream.
