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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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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.
Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS-2022) Plenary SPeaker
Professor
The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
John Foster has worked in the area of advanced space propulsion for 30 years dating back to his undergraduate days as a summer intern at NASA Glenn on gridded ion thrusters. His research includes in-space propulsion technologies ranging from gridded ion thrusters to MPD thrusters as well as gas and liquid core nuclear thermal rockets. He worked on advanced propulsion for nearly 10 years as an employee at NASA before moving to the University of Michigan. At NASA GRC, he served as the ion thruster (HIPEP) principle investigator for the JIMO NEP mission. He also worked on an interstellar precursor high power ion engine as NASA GRC as well. He continued this research at Michigan and extended research effort into space nuclear power and propulsion systems as well. In parallel he has developed as a space nuclear power and propulsion design course. He has also carried out research relevant to space in situ resource utilization including water recycling/purification and plastics waste recycling using plasmas.
Last modified April 25, 2022, 9:31am EDT
