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.
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
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
August 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
DOE-EM continues to be plagued by staffing shortages, GAO says
Despite efforts to increase hiring, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management continues to be understaffed, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. The GAO found that, at the end of fiscal year 2023, DOE-EM had 263 vacant positions across its headquarters, cleanup sites, and EM Consolidated Business Center—a vacancy rate of 17 percent. The office is responsible for the cleanup of the environmental legacy waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.
Yasushi Yamamoto, Hiroki Konda, Yuki Matsuyama, Hodaka Osawa, Masami Ohnishi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 4 | November 2017 | Pages 773-779
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1347461
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first tritium burning experiments of the discharge type fusion neutron source were conducted in January 2015, using a 93% deuterium and 7% tritium gas mixture. In order to conduct the experiment in a closed environment, a gas feed and exhaust system using non-evaporable getter material was prepared. This system was designed to minimize tritium usage and produce measurable changes in the neutron production rate on the basis of the dependence of the equilibrium pressure on getter temperature as included in the manufacturer’s data sheet. However, the present experiments revealed that the gas supply was insufficient and that the discharge duration was limited to about 2 minutes by the pressure drop during discharge.
To determine the cause, verification experiments using hydrogen and deuterium gas were performed. It was found that the pressure variation with getter temperature could be mimicked by exploiting isotope effects and adjusting the hydrogen/deuterium concentration in the getter material according to the gas released into the vacuum chamber. Moreover, prolonged maintenance of a discharge was demonstrated by roughly tripling the amount of gas.
The tritium concentration in the gas mixture, estimated on the basis of the present results, varied between 1.5% and 6.7% according to the assumptions used.