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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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
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.
Yann Le Moigne (Westinghouse Electric Sweden AB), Paul Smeekes (Teollisuuden Voima Oyj), Matthew Solmos (Westinghouse)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1115-1124
In a BWR, the cooler feedwater is injected in the downcomer of the reactor vessel where it mixes with the recirculation water that is separated from the generated steam at the exit of the core. In order to avoid high temperature fluctuations on the reactor vessel and the structures present in the downcomer, this mixing shall be performed in a controlled manner. In order to improve the design of the feedwater spargers in Olkiluoto Unit 1 and 2 in Finland, the thermal mixing of the feedwater with the reactor water in the vicinity of the spargers has been studied with transient Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) calculations. The studies have been performed at three different power levels. Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) calculations have been performed to simulate about 40 s of the water mixing. The time history of the variations of the water temperature on the structures in the downcomer has been analyzed. The calculations have been run for several designs of the replacement spargers. The designs have been assessed using transient statistics of the temperature fluctuations. Minimizing the maximum amplitude of the temperature variations, the so-called peak-to-peak value, has been a design objective.