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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Liqiang Hou, Dahuan Zhu, Qing Wu, Jian Deng, Xiao-li Wu (Nuclear Power Inst of China)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 578-583
The focusing effect of the metal molten pool plays an important role in elevating the validity of the In-Vessel Retention (IVR) during a severe accident while the melting of the shroud and basket can contribute to the formation of the metal molten pool. Therefore, the study on the melting behavior of the shroud and basket can offer technical support for the validity analysis of IVR. The method of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been used to establish a two-dimensional calculation model of the 1/8 core of ACP1000 to study the melting behavior of the shroud and basket during the severe accident of large LOCA. The core has been divided into ten nodes in the axial direction and the radiation model and the solidification and melting model have been considered during the calculation. The results show that the shroud at six out of ten nodes and the basket at five out of ten nodes have melted totally before the first significant migration of the core and that the basket always starts to melt after the shroud has melted totally at the same node.