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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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February 2025
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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.
International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management 2022 Speaker
Tito Bonano is currently Principal Advisor, Nuclear Fuel Cycle Programs at NAC International, Inc. He has nearly 40 years of experience in the nuclear energy fuel cycle, particularly in nuclear waste management. At Sandia National Laboratories, until his retirement in December 2021, Tito was a senior manager leading a multidisciplinary organization conducting R&D projects in both the front end and back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. He played key roles in the initial NRC projects to develop their performance assessment capabilities, the WIPP program, and was a member of the OCRWM leadership team that developed the License Application for the Yucca Mountain Repository, first as licensing manager for the Lead Laboratory for Repository Systems and the subsequently as the Lead Laboratory’s senior program manager.
Based on his own experiences working in the WIPP and Yucca Mountain programs, Tito has had a keen interest in the intersection between the physical sciences and engineering and the policy, social and economic issues related to nuclear energy and nuclear waste management. He was co-founder and co-director of the joint University of Oklahoma – Sandia National Laboratories Center for Energy, Security and Society established in 2013 following several decades of collaborations between the two institutions.
Tito is the winner of two Secretary of Energy Achievement Awards in 2018 and in 2021, and of two Great Minds in STEM’s Hispanic Engineer Awards: Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000 and Lifetime Achievement Award– National Laboratory in 2020.
Tito’s degrees in chemical engineering include a B.S. from the University Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, and M.S. and Ph.D. from Clarkson University.
Last modified September 12, 2022, 7:50am MST
