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Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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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Industry Update—November 2025
Here is a recap of recent industry happenings:
TerraPower’s Natrium plans for Wyoming, Utah move forward
TerraPower has reported a number of developments related to its Natrium sodium fast reactor project. In the project’s fifth round of procurement awards, the company awarded three supplier contracts to support the Natrium plant’s construction, which is underway in Kemmerer, Wyo., and is expected to be completed in 2030. AvanTech will design advanced sodium processing system modules and supporting skids for the Natrium plant, as well as fabricate and deliver the test and fill facility cold trap skid. Structural Integrity Associates will design and fabricate the sodium cover gas gamma spectroscopy analysis cabinet, a radiation monitoring system. PAR Systems will design and fabricate the pool handling machine, a specialized crane system for spent fuel pool operations.
M. Rashid, S. Rahman, R. Kulenovic, M. Bürger, E. Laurien
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 1 | January 2013 | Pages 208-215
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 14th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-14) / Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15768
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the case of a severe accident, continuous unavailability of cooling water to the core will result in overheating and subsequent meltdown of the fuel elements that would eventually result in the loss of fuel integrity. Under such conditions a porous structure, which is made of heat-generating particles of different sizes and shapes, may be formed. The presence of decay heat in such a debris bed poses a critical threat to the reactor pressure vessel (RPV). To avoid any damage to the RPV, the removal of decay heat from the debris bed is of great importance. The debris bed needs to be quenched by water either flooding from the top or flooding from the bottom until continuous cooling is established. To investigate the quenching behavior of the debris bed by means of experiments, the nonnuclear test facility "DEBRIS" has been established at Institut für Kernenergetik und Energiesysteme (IKE). Experimental investigations of quenching behavior for a preheated debris bed, at various initial bed temperatures, are carried out at IKE. In the new quenching tests, the cooling-down behavior of a superheated polydispersed particle bed from stainless steel spheres at different thermohydraulic conditions has been investigated. Numerical investigation with IKE's MEWA-2D code has also been carried out for the quenching experiments in order to promote better understanding of the experimental results as well as to verify the code's applicability to the quenching process.