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
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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.
Magdi Ragheb, Otto Lazareth
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 6 | Number 2 | September 1984 | Pages 195-224
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST84-A23153
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Student's t-distribution is used for the direct estimation of the modeling and geometrical perturbations in the Monte Carlo simulation of fusion blankets. A test of hypothesis is carried out for the equivalence of the means for the reference and perturbed systems at different confidence levels. If the test is failed, intervals for the difference of means or perturbation can be directly deduced. No variance reduction is attempted in the application of this methodology. Application of the methodology to the neutronic and photonic analysis of the conceptual HYFIRE high-temperature process heat fusion reactor blanket is carried out. The use of a two-dimensional model for the analysis versus one-dimensional models leads to differences in the estimated system parameters (e.g., breeding ratio) ranging from 1.5 to 7% at the 70% confidence level. Accounting for the penetrations, using three- versus two-dimensional models, affects those system parameters in the range of 12.8 to 20.9% at the same confidence level. These uncertainties are judged significantly large and need to be accounted for in future reactor designs.