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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Latest News
The journey of the U.S. fuel cycle
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.
Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.
Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.
Yanhua Zheng, Hanliang Bo, Duo Dong
Nuclear Technology | Volume 153 | Number 2 | February 2006 | Pages 234-239
Technical Note | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3703
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As a new type of control rod driving system, the hydraulic control rod driving system (HCRDS) has long been applied in a 5-MW nuclear heating reactor, and the safety and the reliability of the system have been proven. The principle of the work and the step-up operation of the HCRDS have been introduced in this paper. Based on the theoretical model, the temperature influence on the static holding-flow rate, the dynamic holding-flow rate, and the working holding-flow rate has been studied. It indicates that with the increase of the temperature, the static and dynamic holding-flow rates will increase while the working holding-flow rate will decrease.A detailed analysis of the step-up process on various temperature conditions has been carried out. Considering the great temperature influence on the step-up operation of the system, the method of temperature compensation to select suitable delay time and working holding-flow rate in a certain temperature province is put forward to offset the influence. The analysis can be conducive to widespread availability of the HCRDS and establish a basis for further research and improvement.
