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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
Meeting Spotlight
2027 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
October 31–November 4, 2027
Washington, DC|The Westin Washington, DC Downtown
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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Latest News
Texas-based WCS chosen to manage U.S.-generated mercury
A five-year, $17.8 million contract has been awarded to Waste Control Specialists for the long-term management and storage of elemental mercury, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced on November 21.
James P. Blanchard, Carl Martin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 435-439
ARIES | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 2) Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-512
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ARIES project is currently proposing an all-tungsten divertor for their tokamak designs. In designing such a component, fracture will be a critical failure mechanism, due to the limited ductility of the tungsten. Hence, this paper presents a series of fracture mechanics-based analyses to demonstrate the feasibility of using an all-tungsten divertor in a commercial device. The analyses presented here employ a commercial finite element code (ANSYS) to carry out three-dimensional thermal, mechanical, and fracture calculations. Due to the inelastic deformations produced by the high temperatures and stresses in the component, the fracture calculations employ the J-Integral, a path-independent contour integral that estimates the strain energy release rate for a crack of assumed geometry. Elliptical surface cracks are introduced both inside and outside the coolant channel and steady state calculations are carried out for both full power and cold shutdown conditions. It is determined that the critical crack is on the inside of the coolant channel and the largest forcing is during full power. In addition, transient calculations are carried out to simulate edge localized modes (ELMs) in the plasma and conclusions are drawn with respect to the severity of these events and their effect on the lifetime of the component. Finally, thermal creep is considered as a potential failure mode.