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
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
LLNL, Ampera partner to develop thorium-based TRISO fuel
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has formed a strategic partnership with Ampera to develop the company’s nuclear fuel concept through a project named THUNDER, for Thorium Unimodal Droplet Ejection for Reactors.
The focus of THUNDER is fabricating TRISO made with kernels of thorium rather than the usual uranium. LLNL and Ampera will evaluate and optimize liquid metal–jetting technology to produce highly uniform, spherical kernels of thorium-232 for later processing into TRISO fuel.
Yina Zhang, Chao Zhang, Jin Jiang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 98-106
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13330
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this study, computational fluid dynamics simulations are carried out to predict the thermal-hydraulic behavior of supercritical fluids in the subchannel of supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR) fuel channels. The thermal-hydraulic behavior of supercritical water in triangular array and square array fuel rod bundles is studied numerically. The effects of various parameters including the pitch-to-diameter ratio and Reynolds number on the flow and the heat transfer characteristics are investigated. It is found that the turbulent mixing coefficient of supercritical water in subchannels is strongly dependent on the fluid bulk temperature and pitch-to-diameter ratio in the vicinity of the pseudo-critical point. To have a higher overall turbulent mixing coefficient, a pitch-to-diameter ratio less than 1.2 is recommended for the design of SCWR. The turbulent mixing coefficient correlation for the triangular array rod bundle is developed in this study based on the numerical results. However, the correlation for the mixing coefficient for the square array rod bundle cannot be expressed as a general correlation.