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Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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!
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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
Sadia Khalid, Idrees Ahmad, Awais Zahur
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 9 | September 2019 | Pages 1175-1184
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1580530
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The long-term, safe, and reliable operation of a reactor coolant pump is vital for the safety of a nuclear reactor. In the case of a station blackout or power failure to the pump, the inertia of rotating parts of the pump should provide sufficient pumping capacity or flow rate to remove decay heat to ensure the safety of the reactor. An accurate flow coastdown analysis is required for the design and manufacture of reactor coolant pumps. In this paper a mathematical model is formulated to study flow coastdown of CHASNUPP-2, which is a pressurized water reactor. Frictional losses in the pump are also incorporated in the model to get accurate results. Two important parameters of the model are inertia of the pump impeller and inertia of the coolant, which are related to each other in the form of effective energy ratio. The effective energy ratio is made variable in order to accurately model the flow coastdown transient. The model is solved numerically to get flow coastdown curves and the comparison of the theoretical and experimental results shows a good agreement between them.
