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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
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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!
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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
X. Cheng
Nuclear Technology | Volume 154 | Number 1 | April 2006 | Pages 52-68
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3717
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the frame of the European PDS-XADS (Preliminary Design Study-EXperimental Accelerator-Driven System) project, two concepts of a subcritical reactor core cooled by liquid lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) were proposed. In this paper, the local thermal-hydraulic behavior of both LBE-cooled reactor-core concepts was analyzed. For this purpose, the MATRA subchannel analysis code (Multichannel Analyzer for Steady States and Transients in Rod Arrays) was selected, and modification was made for its applications to XADS conditions. Compared to the small-core concept, the large-core concept has a much lower hydraulic resistance, lower local coolant velocity, and lower temperatures of coolant and fuel pins. This enables the natural convection approach for removing reactor heat and for short-term realization of the core design using available technologies. The fuel assembly of the small-core concept has a tight configuration that leads to a high flow velocity and high pressure drop. The high power density of the small core results in high local temperatures of coolant, cladding, and fuel. Both coolant velocity and cladding temperature are such that special attention has to be paid to avoid corrosion and erosion damage of cladding materials. A parametric study shows that under the parameters considered, the mixing coefficient has the biggest effect on the coolant temperature distribution, whereas the cladding temperature is strongly affected by the selection of heat transfer correlations.