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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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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Latest News
Sam Altman steps down as Oklo board chair
Advanced nuclear company Oklo Inc. has new leadership for its board of directors as billionaire Sam Altman is stepping down from the position he has held since 2015. The move is meant to open new partnership opportunities with OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, and other artificial intelligence companies.
Pierdomenico Lorusso, Ivan Di Piazza, Daniele Martelli, Mariano Tarantino
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 4 | April 2024 | Pages 644-665
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2189903
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Within the roadmap for the technological development of Generation IV reactors, the HORIZON2020 European Union–funded Partitioning And Transmuter Research Initiative in a Collaborative Innovation Action (PATRICIA) project was launched to support innovative solutions for the development of the Multi-purpose hYbrid Research Reactor for High-tech Applications (MYRRHA) accelerator-driven system concept and lead fast reactor technologies in general. The ENEA contributes to the project by involving the experimental infrastructures of the Brasimone Research Center (Italy). In particular, a large-scale pool-type facility named CIRColazione Eutettico (CIRCE), using lead-bismuth eutectic as the primary coolant and pressurized water as the secondary fluid, is under refurbishment with the implementation of a novel test section (TS) named Thermal-hydraulic HElical Tubes Innovative System (THETIS) to be installed in the CIRCE main vessel. The new TS will include a vertical mechanical pump for primary coolant circulation and a new prototypical helical coil steam generator (HCSG). This steam generator concept turns out to be very promising for nuclear power plants since the helical geometry is very compact and it assures high power removed, taking up a minimum amount of space. Accordingly, with the aims of the project, the experimental tests in CIRCE-THETIS will focus on (1) investigating the thermal-hydraulic behavior of the system in steady-state operation (forced circulation regime) during operational and accidental transients (postulated scenarios) and in a natural circulation regime considering as heat sink the HCSG (acting as a decay heat removal system) and the reactor vessel auxiliary cooling system in stand-alone or coupled operation and (2) characterizing the performance of the HCSG. The present work presents the layout of the CIRCE-THETIS facility at the end of the final design phase, describing in detail the main components of the TS, along with the instrumentation installed. Focus will be given to the HCSG mock-up, for which pretest analyses using the system thermal-hydraulic code RELAP5/Mod3.3 and a computational fluid dynamics code have been carried out to support the design of the component and to evaluate its thermal-hydraulic performance under the operative conditions foreseen during the experiments.