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 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
Judith K. Hohorst, Chris M. Allison
Nuclear Technology | Volume 98 | Number 2 | May 1992 | Pages 149-159
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34670
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The SCDAP/RELAP5 severe accident analysis computer code, developed at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, is used to analyze the fourth in a series of debris formation experiments. The debris formation-four (DF-4) experiment deals with heatup and meltdown of a boiling water reactor (BWR)-representative fuel and control blade assembly segment, performed in the Annular Core Research Reactor at Sandia National Laboratories. The DF-4 experiment provides data that are used to validate core damage progression and BWR-specific models to gain an understanding of the phenomena occurring in the bundle during a severe BWR accident and to identify additional modeling needed in severe accident codes. The SCDAP/RELAP5 model used for this analysis accurately predicts the key damage events, which include control blade melting, channel box relocation and runaway oxidation, the order and timing of these events, and the maximum bundle temperature. From these analytical calculations, an accident scenario and insights into phenomena occurring during a severe BWR accident are developed.