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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
October 2025
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.
Constantine P. Tzanos, B. Dionne
Nuclear Technology | Volume 176 | Number 1 | October 2011 | Pages 93-105
Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12545
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The simulation of the BR2 test A/400/1 was undertaken to support the safety analysis of the conversion of the BR2 research reactor to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel and to extend the validation basis of the RELAP code for analysis of the conversion of research reactors from highly enriched fuel to LEU. This test was characterized by a steady-state peak heat flux of 400 W/cm2 , total loss of flow without loss of system pressure, reactor scram, flow reversal, and reactor cooling by natural convection. This paper presents the RELAP analysis of test A/400/1 and the comparison of code predictions with experimental measurements of peak cladding temperatures during the transient at different axial locations in an instrumented fuel assembly. The simulations show that accurate representation of the pump coastdown characteristics and of the power distribution, especially after reactor scram, between the fuel assemblies and the moderator/reflector regions are critical for correct prediction of the peak cladding temperatures during the transient. Detailed MCNP and ORIGEN simulations were performed to compute the power distribution between the fuel assemblies and the moderator/reflector regions. With these distributions, the predicted peak cladding temperatures were in a good agreement with experimental measurements.
