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
September 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
NRC issues draft EA/FONSI for Duane Arnold restart
Efforts by NextEra Energy to restart the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant as early as 2029 continue to move forward with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's preliminary environmental assessment and determination that the restart would have no significant environmental impacts.
On Thursday, the NRC posted a draft environmental assessment and a finding of no significant impact for the Palo, Iowa, facility; the Federal Register notice was published on Monday. The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing is a cooperating agency on the draft EA, as the DOE is considering providing financial assistance to the restart project.
Jae-Woo Ju, Sang-Moon Lee, Kwang-Yong Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 2 | February 2013 | Pages 274-281
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors/Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15783
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The outlet plenum of a pebble bed modular-type gas-cooled nuclear reactor was optimized using three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes analysis and optimization techniques. A shear stress transport turbulence model was used as a turbulence closure. Two design variables for the optimization were selected: dimensionless displacement on the horizontal line and the angle of rotation about the center of gravity of the roof support block. The objective function was defined as a pressure drop between the inlet and the outlet of the outlet plenum. Latin hypercube sampling was used for selecting experimental design points within the design space. The objective function value was obtained at each design point through numerical analysis. The results show that the optimal design significantly improved the performance of the outlet plenum with respect to pressure drop. Through optimization, the pressure drop decreased by 11.8% compared to the pressure drop under the reference geometry.