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
May 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
NextEra, Dominion to merge in major utilities announcement
NextEra Energy is set to acquire Dominion Energy, the two utilities announced earlier today in an approximately $67 billion merger that will alter the energy landscape—including for nuclear power—in the United States.
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.