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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
Thomas K. S. Liang, Chung-Yu Yang, Liang-Che Dai
Nuclear Technology | Volume 166 | Number 2 | May 2009 | Pages 146-155
Technical Papers | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A7401
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the innovative design of the advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR), conventional recirculation loops are removed and replaced by multiple reactor internal pumps. Therefore, there is no major penetration of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) below the elevation of the top of active fuel. As a result, an ABWR loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) can have a decreased impact on reactor safety. Moreover, in the new RPV design the injection points of all the conventional low-pressure emergency core cooling (ECC) systems (ECCSs) are shifted out of the core shroud to the downcomer and feedwater line as a new low-pressure ECCS, namely, a low-pressure flooder (LPFL). Consequently, the net hydraulic head built inside the downcomer will be the only driving force to bring the low-pressure ECC water into the core shroud during a large-break LOCA. In the analysis of a feedwater line break with RELAP5-3D/K, it was occasionally found that the hydraulic head built in the downcomer might not be great enough to bring the ECC water into the core shroud, and when the mixture water column ascends above the elevation of the feedwater rings, all the water injected by the LPFL will be directly driven to the break on the feedwater line. Fortunately, the capacity of the remaining high-pressure ECC flow directly injected above the core is great enough, and this ECC low-pressure injection bypass phenomenon can be terminated once the high-pressure ECC injection is manually turned off. This phenomenon of low-pressure ECC injection bypass is unexpected in the ABWR design, and it is worth further investigation.