ANS News

ANSI/ASME/ANS RA-S-1.1-2024, Standard for Level 1/Large Early Release Frequency Probabilistic Risk Assessment for Nuclear Power Plant Applications, has just been published by the American Nuclear Society. The document, which is a joint standard developed with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers by the ANS/ASME Joint Committee on Nuclear Risk Management, received approval of the American National Standards Institute on February 29, 2024, and was issued on March 15, 2024.

The American Nuclear Society is hosting an online event this week that will look at how women are making history in nuclear science and technology trade careers. The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, March 21, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (EDT).

Registration is required.

The American Nuclear Society election for 2024 is now open, and members can vote for the Society’s next vice president/president-elect as well as four U.S. members-at-large and one young member for the Board of Directors.

The American Nuclear Society has hosted workshops for teachers for years, but the latest Educator Workshop and Research Reactor Tour, which took place in November at the 2023 Winter Conference and Expo, was especially successful. ANS partnered with the University of Maryland for the event, which was part of the Society’s Powering Our Future initiative, sponsored by the Department of Energy.

The American Nuclear Society’s Thermal Hydraulics Division is hosting a virtual event on Friday, March 15, from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. (ET), where experts will discuss some of the most impactful work in thermal hydraulics in 2023.

The no-cost event is open to all, but registration is required. Send in your questions now.

The application process is open for the Glenn T. Seaborg Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship. Participants in this program will work on energy legislation in the halls of Congress as representatives of the American Nuclear Society, either in a congressional member’s personal office or with a committee.

The next opportunity to earn professional engineer (P.E.) licensure in nuclear engineering is this fall. Now is the time to sign up and begin studying with the help of materials like the online module program offered by the American Nuclear Society.

The American Nuclear Society is hosting its next online Educator Training series event, “In the Lab with Nuclear Scientists: Critical and Sub-critical Assemblies,” on Thursday, March 7, at 6:00–7:00 pm ET.

Registration for the free event is required.

Each month on the last Friday from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (ET), the American Nuclear Society’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policy Committee (RP3C) holds a Community of Practice (CoP), which is open to all. On February 23, N. Prasad Kadambi, director of his eponymous engineering consultancy firm, presented “Technology-Inclusive Implications of ANSI/ANS-30.3-2022, Light Water Reactor Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Design.”

Next Tuesday, March 5, the American Nuclear Society’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division will host a members-only event on the development of a U.S.-based used nuclear fuel recycling pilot facility. Ross Radel, chief technology officer of SHINE Technologies, will speak about the new initiative.

The webinar will take place from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (EST). Register now.

The American Nuclear Society’s 2024 Annual Conference is moving the venue in part to accommodate a higher-than-expected number of submissions for the Annual Conference and embedded topical meetings—the most received for an annual meeting in over a decade! The conference venue was changed to Mandalay Bay at the beginning of the Las Vegas strip. However, the change in accommodation comes with a change in dates: The meeting has been moved one week later than originally scheduled, to June 16–19.

The ANS honors and awards committee calls on ANS members to nominate colleagues for the annual meeting awards, but act fast, all nominations are due by March 1. The recipients of the national awards listed below will be honored on during the opening plenary session of the 2024 ANS Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nev. Honorees will be notified of their selection by May.

After nearly eight years of valuable service as editor of the American Nuclear Society journal Fusion Science and Technology, Leigh Winfrey has indicated that she intends to step down from the position as of June 2025, providing an opportunity for a fresh voice to lead FST. Consequently, ANS is seeking a qualified individual to fill this position.

The role of the editor is primarily technical leadership, setting the direction of the journal by soliciting papers, special issues, and reviews on important and timely technical topics. The editor also oversees the peer review of submitted papers and decides on acceptance, revision, or rejection.

Nuclear advocates under 40 years of age can now apply for the opportunity to coordinate and execute the Nuclear for Climate (N4C) initiative leading up to COP29.

ANS’s fully open research platform Nuclear Science and Technology Open Research (NSTOR) has two collections forming that aim to capture opinions and data on cross-cutting policy topics.

On February 5, the application process has officially opened for the Glenn T. Seaborg Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship. The American Nuclear Society invites its members to apply for the fellowship, which helps the Society fulfill its strategic goal of enhancing nuclear public policy. Fellows work on energy legislation in the halls of Congress as a representative of ANS, either in a congressional member’s personal office or with a committee.

The American Nuclear Society is holding its next Educator Training webinar, “Build a Nucleus: K-12 Classroom Investigations,” on Tuesday, February 20, 6:00–7:00 p.m. EDT.

Register now for this free event.

The latest virtual event produced by the American Nuclear Society brought together experts from the forefront of the global nuclear industry to discuss strategies for ensuring a safe, secure, and healthy expansion in the face of a rapidly changing energy and geopolitical landscape.

The webinar, moderated by ANS Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy, featured J’Tia Hart, chief science officer for the National and Homeland Security Directorate at Idaho National Laboratory; Anagha Iyengar, deputy program director for analytics and innovation at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of International Nuclear Security; and William Tobey, former NNSA deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation.

The Advanced Reactor Codes and Standards Collaborative (ARCSC) held its second workshop on November 30, 2023, in Washington, D.C. The hybrid event had just over 200 participants, including representatives from standards development organizations (SDOs), the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, national laboratories, government agencies, vendors, advanced reactor designers, and consultants. Also in attendance were representatives from other U.S. industry and international organizations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency. ANS Standards Board chair Andrew Sowder, senior technical executive at EPRI, welcomed attendees to EPRI’s offices, where the workshop was held.

Nuclear Safety Design Criteria and Functional Performance Requirements for Liquid-Fuel Molten Salt Reactor Nuclear Power Plants (ANSI/ANS-20.2-2023) has just been issued and is now available for purchase. It was developed by the American Nuclear Society and received approval from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) on January 4.