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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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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
Rei Kimura, Yuki Nakai, Tadafumi Sano, Atsushi Sakon, Satoshi Wada
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 1859-1866
Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2212828
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An experiment was conducted that demonstrates a novel core power distribution reconstruction method based on ex-core detectors using time-dependent measurement at the University Teaching and Research Reactor of Kindai University (UTR-KINKI). Although the proposed method PHOEBE was able to identify the power distribution change caused by control rods under static conditions in a previous experiment, time-dependent experiments were not conducted. Hence, the present study measured time-dependent neutron counts using ex-core detectors to reconstruct the power distribution based on PHOEBE. Extraction of the control rods was expected to cause a shift in the reactor power distribution from the north side to the south, and the results of the power distribution reconstruction also demonstrated this power shift. This result experimentally and qualitatively demonstrated the detection of time-dependent power shifts based on PHOEBE. However, quantitative verification was difficult in this study because there are no verified time-dependent three-dimensional neutronics codes available. This issue will be addressed in a future study when a code becomes available.
