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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
Ana Da Silva, Pradip Saha, Eric P. Loewen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2016 | Pages 74-88
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT16-55
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The legacy electromagnetic (EM) pump analysis tool MATRIX has been improved by the addition of a thermal analysis module. Although the module is patterned after the general-purpose Advanced General Electric Network Analyzer (AGENA) code, it is developed from a more fundamental approach to provide a better understanding and control of the thermal analysis of the EM pump. The MATRIX results are verified against the AGENA results and the test data from the 160 m3/min large EM pump tests, which provided a good estimate of the thermal conductance between the lamination and the inner duct wall. Full and good contact between the lamination and the inner duct wall is necessary to keep the copper conductor temperatures low. Parametric studies, as expected, confirmed the correct trend of increasing copper conductor temperatures with increasing frequency. The MATRIX results show that a new proposed insulation material for the future EM pumps is beneficial since it could reduce the copper block temperature by ~20°C. Such analysis can help develop a better EM pump with a more compact design and better insulation material.