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
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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
October 2024
Nuclear Technology
September 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2024
Latest News
Nuclear power in the Democratic and Republican party platforms—44 years ago
Tonight, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is expected to offer some policy details in a speech at the Democratic National Convention. With nuclear energy getting firm bipartisan support in Washington, D.C., it won’t come as a surprise if Harris backs nuclear power investments as part of her energy and climate policies.
But 11 campaigns and 44 years ago, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter and Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan were on the campaign trail in the first presidential election contest after the March 1979 accident at Three Mile Island. Democratic and Republican party operatives hashed out policy platforms that took stock of nuclear energy—and Nuclear News took note.
Takehiko Nakamura, Makio Yoshinaga, Makoto Sobajima, Kiyomi Ishijima, Toshio Fujishiro
Nuclear Technology | Volume 108 | Number 1 | October 1994 | Pages 45-60
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A35042
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Irradiated boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel behavior under reactivity-initiated accident (RIA) conditions was investigated in the Nuclear Safety Research Reactor (NSRR) of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. Short test fuel rods, refabricated from a commercial 7 × 7 type BWR fuel rod at a burnup of 26 G Wd/tonne U, were pulse irradiated in the NSRR under simulated cold startup RIA conditions of the BWRs. Thermal energy from 230 J/g fuel (55 cal/g fuel) to 410 J/g fuel (98 cal/g fuel) was promptly subjected to the test fuel rods by pulse irradiation within ∼10 ms. The peak fuel enthalpies are believed to be the same as the prompt energy depositions. The test fuel rods demonstrated characteristic behavior of the irradiated fuel rods under the accident conditions, such as enhanced pellet cladding mechanical interaction (PCMI) and fission gas release. However, all the fuel rods survived the accident conditions with considerable margins. Simulations by the FRAP-T6 code and fresh fuel rod tests under the same RIA conditions highlighted the burnup effects on the accident fuel performance. The tests and the simulation suggested that the BWR fuel would possibly fail by a cladding burst due to fission gas release during the cladding temperature escalation rather than the PCMI under the cold startup RIA conditions of a severe power burst.