ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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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.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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Nuclear Technology
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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Wasim Raza, Kwang-Yong Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 1 | April 2008 | Pages 45-52
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3932
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A hybrid multiobjective evolutionary approach to the design optimization of a seven-pin wire-wrapped fuel assembly is applied to achieve an acceptable compromise between two conflicting objectives: enhancement of heat transfer and reduction of pressure drop. Two nondimensional variables, the ratio of wire-spacer diameter to fuel rod diameter and the ratio of wire-wrap pitch to fuel rod diameter, are chosen as design variables. The Latin hypercube sampling method is used to determine the training points. The response surface method is used to approximate the Pareto-optimal front with Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes analysis of the flow and heat transfer. The shear stress transport turbulence model is used as turbulence closure. The optimization results are processed by the Pareto-optimal method. The Pareto-optimal solutions are obtained using a combination of the evolutionary algorithm NSGA-II and a local search method. The Pareto-optimal front for the wire-wrapped fuel assembly has been obtained. Six optimal values of the design variables have been obtained using clustering. With the increase in the wire-spacer diameter, both heat transfer and pressure drop in the assembly increase. Increasing the wire-wrap pitch reduces the pressure drop in the assembly at the cost of heat transfer.