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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver 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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Carmen García-Rosales, Sigrid Deschka, Wolfgang Hohenauer, Reiner Duwe, Eric Gauthier, Jochen Linke, Martin Lochter, Werner K. W. M. Malléner, Laurenz Plöchl, Peter Rödhammer, Armando Salito, Asdex-Upgrade Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 32 | Number 2 | September 1997 | Pages 263-276
Technical Paper | First Wall Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST97-A19896
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tiles of fine-grain graphite coated with tungsten layers by different plasma spray techniques (thickness 100 to 550 µm) and by physical vapor deposition (PVD) (thickness 20 to 100 µm) were subjected to heat fluxes, as expected for the divert or of the Axially Symmetric Divertor Experiment (ASDEX)-Upgrade tokamak. By a stepwise increase of the applied heat flux up to 16 MW/m2 and different pulse durations (1 to 5 s), the maximum load for disabling damage of the coating was determined. The fatigue behavior of the coatings was investigated by cyclic loading. The results show that plasma spray coatings are able to withstand heat loads up to 15 MW/m2 for a 2-s pulse without structural changes and cyclic loading with 1000 cycles at 10 MW/m2 and a 2-s pulse. The PVD coatings show damage by crack formation and melting at slightly lower heat loads than most of the plasma spray coatings. Under cyclic loading, the thin PVD coatings fail by extensive crack formation. The results of the tests indicate that the good performance of the plasma spray coatings is related to their higher porosity, which provides a crack-arresting mechanism, and to their mechanical strength.