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
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
From South Korea to Belgium: Testing a high-density research reactor fuel
The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has developed a high-density uranium silicide fuel designed to replace high-enriched uranium in research reactors. Recent irradiation tests appear to be successful, KAERI reports, which means the fuel could be commercialized to continue a key global nuclear nonproliferation effort—converting research reactors to run on low-enriched uranium fuel.
Roberto Ponciroli, Stefano Passerini, Richard B. Vilim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 191 | Number 2 | August 2015 | Pages 151-166
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-68
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The recent interest in the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) for its potential increased economic competitiveness has focused attention in part on reducing operational costs to offset those plant costs that do not benefit from the economies of scale of large traditional units. Plant operation and maintenance economics are significantly driven by plant availability, which can be enhanced by means of innovative control strategies by avoiding unnecessary plant or unit trips. In this context, an effective strategy for achieving fast runback of a sodium-cooled SMR has been developed. In this work, after having defined and modeled a suitable control strategy by adopting the Petri nets formalism, a Model-based Predictive Control regulator has been developed in order to reduce as promptly as possible the power level, without scramming the reactor (fast runback) and possibly limiting the control rod contribution. Such flexibility could lead to significant savings in the operational costs of the reactor while also improving the system availability. The proposed procedure has been characterized by simulating the operational transients on both an oxide-fueled reactor and on a metal-fueled reactor, comparing the responses of the two different configurations and the respectively needed control rod contribution.