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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.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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
Grégory Perret, Damar Wicaksono, Ivor D. Clifford, Hakim Ferroukhi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 12 | December 2019 | Pages 1638-1651
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1591154
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper illustrates the capability of a global sensitivity analysis (GSA) framework applied to the TRACE thermal-hydraulics (TH) system code in the context of selected flooding experiments with blocked arrays reflood experiments. The proposed GSA framework deals with functional outputs (temperature profiles) and aims at quantifying the sensitivity of a specific feature of the reflood curve (its amplitude) to the physical parameters of TRACE. The framework uses a registration strategy based on the Square Root Slope Function (SRSF) transform to separate the amplitude and phase of the temperature profile. The registration is followed by a dimension reduction on principal component basis and the estimation of Sobol’ sensitivity indices. This paper compares the SRSF registration to the more traditional landmark registration and shows its excellent properties. Given the simple nature of the reflood curve, the Sobol’ indices obtained on the amplitude of the reflood curve also compare well with those obtained on the scalar maximum temperature of the curve. This suggests the framework to be of interest for deriving the sensitivity of the amplitude of more complex TH transients to the physical parameters of the code.
