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.
Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott 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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Smarter waste strategies: Helping deliver on the promise of advanced nuclear
At COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, a clear consensus emerged: Nuclear energy must be a cornerstone of the global clean energy transition. With electricity demand projected to soar as we decarbonize not just power but also industry, transport, and heat, the case for new nuclear is compelling. More than 20 countries committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy forecasts that the country’s current nuclear capacity could more than triple, adding 200 GW of new nuclear to the existing 95 GW by mid-century.
Ralf Wittmaack
Nuclear Technology | Volume 119 | Number 2 | August 1997 | Pages 158-180
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35384
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
New design features of future reactors are being developed to ensure the integrity of the reactors under severe accident conditions. These features include the spreading of corium with subsequent flooding and cooling. Numerical simulations are performed to reduce the number of necessary large-scale experiments with radioactive material. For this reason, the development, verification, and validation of simulation methods are important foci. A method for predicting three-dimensional free-surface flows of a single-component, incompressible Newtonian fluid is presented. The thermodynamics and discrete phase transitions are simulated also. In addition to the fluid, structural materials are considered as hydrodynamic obstacles and heat structures. The method is applied to several flow, heat transfer, and phase transition problems of water and glycerol and of cerrotru (low-melting Bi-Sn alloy), thermite, and corium melts. The predictions provide a satisfactory representation of the experimental data and analytical solutions. Different physical processes are analyzed, e.g., gravity waves, creeping flows, Bénard convection, and thermodynamic interactions of fluid, structural material, and surroundings. The method is applied to the layout and design of experiments and exvessel corium-retention devices in nuclear reactors.