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Mathematics & Computation
Division members promote the advancement of mathematical and computational methods for solving problems arising in all disciplines encompassed by the Society. They place particular emphasis on numerical techniques for efficient computer applications to aid in the dissemination, integration, and proper use of computer codes, including preparation of computational benchmark and development of standards for computing practices, and to encourage the development on new computer codes and broaden their use.
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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
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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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Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
B. Tourniaire, B. Spindler, M. Guillaumé
Nuclear Technology | Volume 170 | Number 1 | April 2010 | Pages 201-209
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 2008 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants / Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-6
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Heat transfer between corium pool and concrete directly governs the ablation velocity of concrete in the case of molten core-concrete interaction (MCCI) and, consequently, the time delay when the reactor cavity may fail. Numerical tools dealing with MCCI generally consider that the ablation velocity of concrete is higher than the "velocity" of heat transfer inside the concrete so that conduction heat transfer in the basemat is not taken into account. With such modeling, concrete ablation goes on until the heat flux between the corium pool and the concrete is zero. This assumption proved to be satisfactory for high heat flux because of the low thermal diffusivity of concrete. Nevertheless, it can be discussed in cases where the heat flux between the corium and the concrete is "low" that is in the long-term phase of MCCI or in cases with a strong imbalance in the power splitting at the corium pool boundaries. In such situations, the heat transfer by conduction in the concrete is no longer negligible and can lead to the end of the concrete ablation. Heat conduction in the concrete could be taken into account by solving multi-dimensional transient heat transfer equations in the concrete. A spatial meshing of the basemat is then necessary, but such an approach is time-consuming. That is why a simplified one-dimensional transient approach has been chosen and implemented in the TOLBIAC-ICB code. The main purpose of this paper is to present this approach. The validation has been performed by comparing the results of this method with experimental data obtained from studying the thermal response of polymethylmetacrylate and concrete to a heat flux. Results of the model are also compared to the solutions obtained by the numerical resolution of the discretized heat transfer equation on a fine mesh. Finally, an application to the reactor case is proposed.