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
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
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2025
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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
Jamal Al Zain, O. El Hajjaji, T. El Bardouni, M. Lahdour
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 4 | April 2020 | Pages 620-636
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1662669
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Syrian miniature neutron source reactor (MNSR), a 30-kW, 90.0% highly enriched uranium fueled (U-Al) MNSR-type reactor has gone critical. Under operating conditions of 2 h per day for 5 days a week at a peak thermal neutron flux of 1.0 × 1012 n/cm2·s, the estimated core life is 10 years. After the fuel is depleted, the full spent-fuel assembly will be replaced with new low-enriched uranium. This study presents the results of a multigroup fuel burnup and depletion analysis of the MNSR fuel lattice using the DRAGON5 transport lattice code. Furthermore, infinite multiplication factor k∞ and several two-group macroscopic parameters, including scattering cross section, fission cross section, total cross section, and diffusion coefficient, and the transport mean free path have been studied. In addition to this, fuel isotopic composition dependency on burnup was calculated as a part of this study. The results contained in this study can be used as a microscopic database for performing criticality safety analysis and shielding computations for the design of a spent-fuel storage cask for the MNSR reactor core.
