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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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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Webinar: MC&A and safety in advanced reactors in focus
Towell
Russell
Prasad
The American Nuclear Society’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division recently hosted a webinar on updating material control and accounting (MC&A) and security regulations for the evolving field of advanced reactors.
Moderator Shikha Prasad (CEO, Srijan LLC) was joined by two presenters, John Russell and Lester Towell, who looked at how regulations that were historically developed for traditional light water reactors will apply to the next generation of nuclear technology and what changes need to be made.
R. J. Park, S. B. Kim, K. Y. Suh, J. L. Rempe, F. B. Cheung
Nuclear Technology | Volume 156 | Number 3 | December 2006 | Pages 270-281
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3790
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Detailed analyses of a late-phase melt progression in the advanced power reactor (APR)1400 were completed to identify the melt and the thermal-hydraulic states of the in-vessel materials in the reactor vessel lower plenum at the time of reactor vessel failure to evaluate the candidate strategies for an in-vessel corium retention (IVR). Initiating events considered included high-pressure transients of a total loss of feed water (LOFW) and a station blackout (SBO) and low-pressure transients of a 0.0009-m2 small, 0.0093-m2 medium, and 0.0465-m2 large-break loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) without safety injection. Best-estimate simulations for these low-probability events with conservative accident progression assumptions that lead to reactor vessel failure were performed by using the SCDAP/RELAP5/MOD3.3 computer code. The SCDAP/RELAP5/MOD3.3 results have shown that the pressurizer surge line failed before the reactor vessel failure, which results in a rapid decrease of the in-vessel pressure and a delay of the reactor vessel failure time of ~40 min in the high-pressure sequences of the total LOFW and the SBO transients. In all the sequences, ~80 to 90% of the core material was melted and relocated to the lower plenum of the reactor vessel at the time of reactor vessel failure. The maximum value of the volumetric heat source in the corium pool was estimated as 1.9 to 3.7 MW/m3. The corium temperature was ~2800 to 3400 K at the time of reactor vessel failure. The highest volumetric heat source sequence is predicted for the 0.0465-m2 large-break LOCA without safety injection in the APR1400, because this sequence leads to an early reactor vessel failure.