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
Energy analyst: Clean energy dreams come only with advanced nuclear
Wald
“We’re going to have to do things differently if we hope to trim the output of climate-changing emissions,” writes Matthew L. Wald in an essay recently published by the Breakthrough Institute. Wald is an independent energy analyst, writer, and Nuclear News contributor who formerly worked for the Nuclear Energy Institute and the New York Times. In the essay, he says that despite optimism surrounding progress in clean energy, consumption of fossil fuels is growing, and greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.
Wald suggests that this situation is unlikely to turn around until small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear technologies are demonstrated to be commercially viable.
Race to zero emissions? Wald notes that “global consumption of fossil fuels grew 1.5 percent last year.” Furthermore, “the fossil mix is getting worse; oil was up even faster than total fossil consumption, and demand passed 100 million barrels a day for the first time.
David W. Esh, Barry E. Scheetz
Nuclear Technology | Volume 137 | Number 3 | March 2002 | Pages 241-251
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3271
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The chemical and mineralogical conditions of the near-field, i.e., that area in the vicinity of the waste materials, may be significantly altered from ambient conditions by thermohydrological processes resulting from the placement of heat-generating radioactive materials in a geologic repository. Models are developed linking the thermohydrological effects simulated with TOUGH2 to a nonreactive aqueous species (chloride). Perturbations in near-field chemistry from the ambient conditions may have potential impacts on engineered barrier system (EBS) performance, waste-form degradation processes, and radionuclide transport. The results of thermohydrological simulations with TOUGH2 utilizing various conceptual models for fracture representation are coupled to simple chemical models (density and osmotic effects are neglected) to demonstrate the complexity and potential magnitude of thermohydrochemical (T-H-C) processes. The concentration of chloride in solution returning to the EBS following dryout, in extreme cases, is predicted to exceed 100 000 mg/l. The dimensionality of the problem and the rate at which the tuffaceous rocks rewet significantly affect the magnitude of the thermohydrological impact on chloride redistribution. A process metric (initial rewetting rate and distribution) that is ignored when evaluating thermohydrological response is very important when a more complex coupling (T-H-C) is considered.