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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
L. E. Herranz, F. Sánchez, S. Gupta
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 10 | October 2023 | Pages 1523-1536
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2122679
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The removal of aerosol particles and vapors in gas bubbles moving through a water pool is known to be an efficient means to reduce source term to the environment during severe accidents, as happened in Fukushima Daiichi. This trapping, called pool scrubbing, entails a complex phenomenology in which hydrodynamics, thermal hydraulics, and aerosol physics strongly affect each other and determine the net transfer of radioactivity coming out from the aqueous pond. More than 20 experimental programs have addressed this issue since the early 1980s, but few of them did it in a systematic and representative way. This paper thoroughly reviews the entire pool scrubbing database until 2016 and assesses the adequacy of the experimental setup, representativeness of boundary conditions, weaknesses in decontamination factor derivation, data uncertainties, and some other aspects to finally synthesize a reduced number of experiments that could be used as an experimental matrix for the validation of pool scrubbing models. More than 500 tests were reviewed and classified as Qualified for Validation, Useful for Understanding, or Not Useful; less than 15% of these experiments are considered in the proposed validation matrix due to different reasons. Major insights and remaining needs are also highlighted. This work was conducted under the framework of the Integration of Pool Scrubbing Research to Enhance Source-Term Calculations, or the IPRESCA project, led by Becker Technologies, in the framework of the Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technology Platform/Nuclear Generation II & III Alliance/Technical Area 2.