ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Alfred W. Reed, Herbert Meister, Daniel J. Sasmor
Nuclear Technology | Volume 78 | Number 1 | July 1987 | Pages 54-61
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT87-A34008
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the elements used to compute the dryout heat flux of a debris bed is the capillary pressure/saturation curve. This relationship describes the pressure difference between liquid and vapor phases in a porous bed as a function of saturation. It is used in the calculation of the liquid and vapor pressure drops in the debris and in the calculation of channel depth. The first complete correlation of capillary pressure/saturation data was reported in 1941 by Leverett. Leverett demonstrated that the data for unconsolidated sand in the 45- to 180-µm range could be non-dimensionalized using the liquid surface tension, bed permeability, and void fraction. At the time, the primary interest was in geologic materials and further work on unconsolidated particulate was limited. The presented measurements of capillary pressure are designed to check the range of validity of the Leverett correlation. For beds with narrow particle size distributions, the Leverett correlation is found to be adequate. For beds composed of broad size distributions, the capillary pressure curve changed significantly.