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
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Interns to Industry: Connecting students to the workforce
The nuclear industry has long recognized a shortage of both skilled craft labor and professional talent. As global demand for reliable energy continues to rise—across the United States and internationally—that need has not only increased but has become critical.” This is a truth that nuclear industry consultant Jeffery P. Hawkins understands, and it is why he developed a program called Interns to Industry. The former Fluor Corporation executive said that “there has been a deficit of qualified resources in the nuclear industry, and this is forecasted to be even more so in the future, so I am working with various universities to determine how to customize their curriculums to fit the forecasted needs of the industry.”
Joseph J. Cambareri (NCSU), Jun Fang (ANL), Andre Gouws, Igor A. Bolotnov (NCSU)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 335-340
Understanding the dynamics behind bubbly flows is critical to the analysis of a pressurized water reactor (PWR) system, but there are still phenomena within bubbly flows that are not fully understood. Utilizing direct numerical simulations (DNS) coupled with interface tracking methods (ITM), high-fidelity numerical data can be extracted from bubbly flow simulations for use in the development of closure laws and mechanistic models. With the use of a bubble tracking algorithm that can record information specific to individual bubbles within the flow, numerical data can be gathered on a fundamental level. State-of-the-art high performance computing (HPC) facilities were used to simulate two-phase, turbulent flow within the subchannel of a PWR for both a simple subchannel geometry and one with a spacer grid and mixing vanes included. A statistical analysis of the numerical data gathered from these simulations can then be studied to discover the dependency of bubble dynamics upon flow conditions. Bubbles can be split into groups in relation to their distance to the wall, and the dependency of quantities such as the relative velocity or the drag coefficient upon the distance to the wall can be investigated. This work splits previously generated numerical data into seven bubble groups for further statistical analysis, as well as dividing the subchannel into “quadrants” to check for time averaged imbalances in bubble population resulting from geometric influences. These post processing techniques seek to offer insight into the physics behind bubbly flow conditions.