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.
Jeffrey W. Dickinson, Andrew C. Klein
Nuclear Technology | Volume 114 | Number 2 | May 1996 | Pages 205-223
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35250
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Modeling efforts are undertaken to perform coupled thermal-hydraulic and thermionic analysis for both single-cell and multicell thermionic fuel elements (TFE). The analysis—and the resulting MCTFE computer code (multicell thermionic fuel element) — is a steady-state finite volume model specifically designed to analyze cylindrical TFEs. It employs an iterative successive overrelaxation solution technique to solve for the temperatures throughout the TFE and a coupled thermionic routine to determine the total TFE performance. The calculated results include temperature distributions in all regions of the TFE, axial interelectrode voltages and current densities, and total TFE electrical output parameters including power, current, and voltage. MCTFE-generated results compare experimental data from the single-cell Topaz-II-type TFE and multicell data from the General Atomics 3H5 TFE to benchmark the accuracy of the code methods.