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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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.
S. C. McCool, P. H. Edmonds, G. G. Castle
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 2 | March 1992 | Pages 114-128
Technical Paper | Fusion Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29731
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The use of 6LiT pellet injection for the Burning Plasma Experiment (BPX), the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), or reactor fueling using the low ion temperature catalyzed reaction 6LiT + D-D proposed by Krasnopol'skij et al. is investigated. Solid LiT has significant advantages as a pellet material over cryogenic deuterium-tritium because of its higher heat of sublimation, mechanical strength, attainable pellet velocity, and plasma penetration. The implications of this for ignition scenarios are discussed. Injection of LiT has the additional advantage of inherent lithium wall conditioning, which has been shown in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) and the Texas Experimental Tokamak (TEXT) to have effects similar to boronization. The injection of LiH pellets has been demonstrated in TEXT, and observed pellet penetration is compared with an ablation model, which is then used to predict LiT penetration in ITER and BPX.