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
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
U.S. nuclear supply chain: Ready for liftoff
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
This month, September 8–11, the American Nuclear Society is teaming up with the Nuclear Energy Institute to host our first-ever Nuclear Energy Conference and Expo—NECX for short—in Atlanta. This new meeting combines ANS’s Utility Working Conference and NEI’s Nuclear Energy Assembly to form what NEI CEO Maria Korsnick and I hope will be the premier nuclear industry gathering in America.
We did this because after more than four decades of relative stagnation, the U.S. nuclear supply chain is finally entering a new era of dynamic growth. This resurgence is being driven by several powerful and increasingly durable forces: the explosive demand for electricity from artificial intelligence and data centers, an unprecedented wave of public and private acceptance of—and investment in—advanced nuclear technologies, and a strong market signal for reliable, on-demand power. Add the recent Trump administration executive orders on nuclear into the mix, and you have all the makings of an accelerant-rich business environment primed for rapid expansion.
Florin Curca-Tivig
Nuclear Technology | Volume 124 | Number 1 | October 1998 | Pages 65-81
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2909
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The European Pressurized Water Reactor's (EPR's) safety injection system (SIS) comprises four trains, each of them consisting of a medium head safety injection, an accumulator, and a low head safety injection (LHSI). Injection mode is into the cold legs of the main coolant line for the short term. This emergency core cooling (ECC) mode is quite different from the typical German concept with combined injection, i.e., safety injection into both the cold and the hot legs of the main coolant line at least for accumulator and LHSI. Therefore, the German Safety Authority requested justification for giving up the ECC-mode used in German pressurized water reactors, the so-called "combined injection." Furthermore, the Reaktor-sicherheitskommission requested a comparison between cold-leg injection and combined injection in terms of ECC efficiency over all relevant accident sequences.The evolution from combined injection to cold-leg injection is described and results of comparative analysis are summarized. It is demonstrated that EPR's SIS is a well-balanced system, which ensures high ECC efficiency and limits loads to containment over the whole accident spectrum. For the entire loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) spectrum, ECC efficiency of EPR's SIS is practically equivalent to ECC efficiency of a SIS of the KONVOI type with combined injection. The smaller the break, the more insignificant are differences. The ECC mode has a negligible impact on containment pressure and temperature evolution during a LOCA. Neither with combined injection nor with cold-leg injection is a containment spray system needed.