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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
March 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2025
Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
2021 ANS Annual Meeting Plenary SPeaker
Mark is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a faculty fellow at the McCormick School, and co-founding partner in the Montrose Lane energy-tech venture fund. He writes frequently for numerous publications (Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, TechCrunch, etc.) and is author of the book, Digital Cathedrals: The Information Infrastructure Era, (January 2020) and, Work In The Age Of Robots (2018). With the book he co-authored in 2005, The Bottomless Well, Bill Gates said: “This is the only book I’ve ever seen that really explains energy.” He served as chairman and CTO of ICx Technologies, helping take it public in a 2007 IPO. Earlier Mark served in the White House Science Office under President Reagan. Prior to that, Mills was an experimental physicist and development engineer in microprocessors and fiber optics, earning several patents, at Bell Northern Research (Canada’s Bell Labs) and at the RCA David Sarnoff Research Center. He holds a BSc Honours in physics from Queen’s University, Canada.
Last modified March 5, 2021, 8:45am EST
