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 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Two steps forward for U.K. advanced nuclear
This week, two significant announcements have emerged from the United Kingdom’s advanced reactor sector.
On June 14, Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they had signed two trilateral memorandums of cooperation to collaborate on “advanced modular reactor (AMR) technology, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), and the coated particle fuel these reactors will use.”
Separately, on June 16, Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower announced that its Natrium reactor design has been formally submitted for U.K. regulatory review. The company also announced the formation of a new subsidiary, TerraPower UK Ltd.
Amir Ali, Edward Blandford, Youho Lee (Univ of New Mexico), Khalid Hattar (SNL), Hyun-Gil Kim, Dong Jun Park (KAERI)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 428-439
The concept of coating the currently used nuclear fuel cladding (zirconium-based alloy) with an oxidation preventive layer could be a solution to suppress undesirable fast reaction kinetics with high-temperature steam. Critical Heat Flux (CHF) is a thermal-hydraulic performance parameter to investigate for these new cladding concepts including Cr-coated Zirc-based cladding. The exposure of coated Zirc-based cladding for an extensive period inside the reactor to severe conditions of high pressure and temperature, water chemistry, and irradiation environment could result in structure and property changes. These changes would have an impact on the heat transfer performance parameters including CHF. Surface wettability analysis, including contact angle (?) and surface roughness (Ra), are simple surface measurements used in the literature to predict changes in the pool boiling heat transfer coefficient and CHF. This work presents the effects of ion irradiation on surface wettability measurements and predicted pool boiling CHF for bare Zirc-4, and multiple Cr-coated Zirc-based samples of different coating thicknesses (5 - 30 ?m). The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images show no significant surface damages due to ion irradiation. The ion irradiation shows no effects on the measured surface roughness for all samples. Results show that decreasing the Cr-coating thickness results in a higher surface wettability pre- and post- ion irradiation. The irradiated Cr-coated surfaces have higher measured contact angle compared to the unirradiated surfaces. The unpolished coated Zirc samples have larger measured surface roughness compared to the polished surfaces pre- and post- ion irradiation. The predicted pool boiling CHF using the contact angle measurements implemented in Kandlikar model for unirradiated samples is higher than those for irradiated samples.