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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
X. Gaus-Liu, A. Miassoedov, J. Foit, T. Cron, F. Kretzschmar, Alexander Palagin, T. Wenz, S. Schmidt-Stiefel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 1 | January 2013 | Pages 216-226
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 14th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-14) / Fission Reactors; Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15769
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The LIVE-L4 and LIVE-L5L experiments investigated the thermal-hydraulic behavior of the corium pool in the reactor pressure vessel lower head with the three-dimensional test vessel LIVE. The simulant material is a noneutectic binary mixture of 20% NaNO3-80% KNO3. Transient and steady-state parameters such as melt temperature and heat flux distribution through the vessel wall as well as crust formation characteristics were obtained. The two tests demonstrated that transient events like repeated melt relocation and change of decay power density facilitate crust deformation and change of crust thickness. Massive crust formation in a noneutectic melt pool leads to a change of melt pool composition and a decrease of melt-crust interface temperature. The melt temperature and heat flux at the same pool height and same power density can be roughly compared independent of heating history and initial melt pouring pattern. The dimensionless melt temperature as well as the dimensionless heat flux through the wall during the steady state are independent of power density if the pools have the same height. But, they are dependent on the pool height. For a low pool, the gradients with height of both melt temperature and heat flux through the vessel are larger than those for a high pool.