ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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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
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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!
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
A more open future for nuclear research
A growing number of institutional, national, and funder mandates are requiring researchers to make their published work immediately publicly accessible, through either open repositories or open access (OA) publications. In addition, both private and public funders are developing policies, such as those from the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the European Commission, that ask researchers to make publicly available at the time of publication as much of their underlying data and other materials as possible. These, combined with movement in the scientific community toward embracing open science principles (seen, for example, in the dramatic rise of preprint servers like arXiv), demonstrate a need for a different kind of publishing outlet.
Challenge: Expedite nuclear education updates and knowledge transfer.
How: Expedite updates to the higher education Nuclear Engineering curriculum to better match today’s needs. It must include the cross-disciplinary nature of today’s research and the business and communications skills needed for an entrepreneurial path, while improving the transfer of knowledge and expertise in nuclear science and technology from the current generation to future generations.
Background: The nuclear workforce is aging, and the current university Nuclear Engineering curriculum needs to be updated. The average age of nuclear scientists and engineers in the nuclear energy industry, national laboratories, and universities is over 50. These professionals have a wealth of knowledge that is not necessarily written in books. As these workers leave the workforce, much of that knowledge is being lost.
Effective means to transfer that knowledge to the newest group of scientists and engineers needs to be developed and implemented. Additionally, the Nuclear Engineering curriculum in U.S. universities stands essentially unchanged over the past 20-plus years. With the advent of new reactor designs and the challenges within materials science to meet the needs of these new designs, the curriculum structure must be reviewed and updated to better meet the needs of industry, suppliers, and research organizations. Inclusion of courses in advanced reactor design, small reactor design and operation, and materials science may need to be included. If we do not know our history, we are doomed to repeat our predecessors’ mistakes.
Last modified May 12, 2017, 1:23am CDT
