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
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
J. Hope Forsmann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 1 | January 2016 | Pages 213-217
Technical Note | Special Issue on the RELAP5-3D Computer Code | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-141
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To support the functionality of RELAP5-3D for best-estimate reactor simulation code, a variety of utility programs were developed at Idaho National Laboratory. Conversion and upgrades of RELAP5-3D to FORTRAN 95 required the upgrades of these utility programs as well. Pygmalion (Pygi) and the RELAP5-3D Graphical User Interface (RGUI) are two of the utility programs that were upgraded and enhanced.
Pygi creates a copy of a RELAP5-3D input file with updated initial condition information. From the restart/plot file of the RELAP5-3D run of an input deck, Pygi obtains the final conditions for each component. It creates a new input file that replaces the original input file values with updated conditions. This provides an accurate and efficient means of creating new input decks with steady-state input conditions.
RGUI is an alternative to the command line interface for performing RELAP5-3D–related work. RGUI provides single-interface access to other RELAP5-3D tools such as Pygi. It is highly configurable, allowing the user to customize the environment. The interface runs on both Linux and Windows.
This suite of utility programs is continually being enhanced to provide better support for RELAP5-3D users. This technical note provides details of Pygi and RGUI functionality. Future plans for enhancements are also included.