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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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
Aug 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2024
Latest News
DNFSB to hold public meeting on aging management
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which provides safety oversight of Department of Energy sites, is holding a public hearing on August 14 on benchmarking of best practices in the management of aging infrastructure.
According to the DNFSB, the goal of the hearing is to gather information from relevant organizations on best practices in infrastructure aging management to inform the development of potential safety improvements to DOE programs.
G. Vendryes
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 90 | Number 4 | August 1985 | Pages 427-430
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE85-A18490
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The possibilities of breeding in liquid-metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs) and light water reactors (LWRs) are compared in two ways. The feasibility of breeding has been demonstrated in the Phénix reactor with a measured gain of 0.14. The gain in Superphénix will amount to ∼ 0.20. The studies show that while maintaining the performance of commercial reactors their breeding gain can be further increased either by the concept of heterogeneous cores or by using carbide or nitride fuel (breeding gain ∼ 0.35). Recently, the old idea of breeding in advanced pressurized water reactors (PWRs) has been taken up again with the objective of attaining a gain of 0.05. Unfortunately, these objectives had to be limited to a conversion ratio of 0.9 for safety reasons, and it is not certain whether operation will be rewarding economically. The strategy of substituting PWRs is examined using the French example. By gradually introducing LMFBRs, the cumulated uranium supplies in France can be kept within reasonable limits, which means that they attain three to jour times the home resources. This is not possible with advanced LWRs, which can be considered only as a possible backup solution for plutonium recycling into PWRs.