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Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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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
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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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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.
Charles J. Mueller, David C. Wade
Nuclear Technology | Volume 91 | Number 2 | August 1990 | Pages 215-225
Technical Paper | Safety of Next Generation Power Reactor / Nuclear Saftey | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34429
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The approach and methods used at Argonne National Laboratory to assess core damage probability in risk assessments for innovative liquid-metal reactor (LMR) designs using metal-fueled cores in pool configurations are outlined. Bounding estimates for the predicted frequency of core damage from all unprotected initiating events are developed by establishing a set of reference scenarios from traditional anticipated transient without scram events. Sources of uncertainty are described and categorized. A probabilistic treatment is used to propagate the various uncertainties through safety analyses to determine their effects on limiting reactor parameters. For example, probability distributions for safety margins to selected core temperatures are propagated from sensitivity studies and estimates of the underlying uncertainties in reactivity feedback coefficients. Considerable self-cancellation of many of the contributors to core response uncertainties is demonstrated analytically. Upper bound probabilities of core damage are then calculated for the LMR cores currently being designed. The results show that these designs have much lower probabilities of suffering core damage than are predicted in published risk assessments for commercial power reactors. Finally, design strategies that can be used to reduce these already low probabilities to almost arbitrarily low values are discussed.