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
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 Science and Engineering
June 2025
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.
Kieran Dolan, Steven Huang, Micah Hackett, Lin-Wen Hu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 10 | October 2021 | Pages 1578-1598
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1829428
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Mitigating the release of tritium produced from neutron irradiation of molten salts containing lithium or beryllium is a technical challenge for several advanced reactor designs. In a pebble bed Fluoride-Salt-Cooled High-Temperature Reactor (FHR), tritium generated in the Li2BeF4 (Flibe) coolant is expected to interact with the large inventory of graphite in the core. The degree to which tritium is retained in the FHR core graphite is important to understand in order to predict the tritium distribution in the reactor, operational dose rates in the plant, tritium source term, and optimal strategies to mitigate environmental release. Tritium retention in graphite is simulated in this work based on a model that considers tritium diffusion from Flibe into graphite pores as well as diffusion and trapping in graphite grains. The retention model was implemented into the TRIDENT model framework to study tritium transport at the FHR system level. Tritium permeation through the FHR primary heat exchanger was the largest source of release from the primary system, followed by tritium retention and recirculation of graphite fuel pebbles.