ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Feb 2025
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
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.
Myoung-Suk Kang, Gyunyoung Heo, Young-Seok Lee, Hyuck Jong Kim
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 1-8
doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12397
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper surveyed the safety issues and the related engineered safety features for designing Korean demonstration fusion power plant. Since the design process was staying at a conceptual stage and regulatory requirements were not fully matured, it was significant to investigate the broad options and select feasible candidates. In order to straddle system's performance and risk, the study followed the principles of Axiomatic Design (AD) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). The interplay of AD and FTA facilitates developing the design of fusion power plants for enhancing performance (power generation) and reducing risk (radiation hazard). While AD is a synthesis process in the success domain to compromise functional requirements and design options in terms of a functional hierarchy tree, FTA considers a safety analysis process in the failure domain. The functional hierarchy tree, which is also named as a functional requirement and design parameter tree, showed the entire fusion power plant with multiple design candidates in a hierarchic manner. This tree can be transformed into a fault tree. While developing the fault tree, the list of DBAs which are the failure modes for the leaves of the fault tree could be recognized, and the associated engineered safety features were proposed depending on the consequences of a DBA. As a demonstration for analyzing a DBA, the mass and energy release calculation for in-vessel loss of coolant accident was described.