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
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott 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!
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2025
Nuclear Technology
June 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Antti Timperi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 1 | October 2018 | Pages 25-40
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1461518
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large-eddy simulations (LESs) for two different T-junctions are performed for the prediction of thermal mixing loads on piping. In particular, the effects of wall treatment and mesh on temperature and wall heat flux fluctuations are studied. Wall-resolved LES shows good agreement with an experiment having adiabatic walls, but using wall functions shows deviations in root-mean-squared (RMS) temperatures and cross-stream mean velocities. The simulations show increases in peak RMS temperatures with local mesh refinement, and hence, too-low peak values are obtained with wall functions. The highest temperature fluctuations occur locally near the T-junction requiring a dense mesh. Wall functions are unable to capture high wall heat fluxes at a sharp corner, but otherwise, the maximum RMS value is close to a wall-resolved LES. For a T-junction having a round corner, higher RMS heat flux is obtained with wall functions compared to a wall-resolved case. Wall functions show lower instantaneous heat fluxes than wall-resolved LES, but the wall functions nonetheless result in higher pipe wall temperature fluctuations due to lower frequency content.