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
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
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
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
W. A. Houlberg, S. E. Attenberger
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 316-321
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40179
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The relationships between fueling (gas injection and pellets of various sizes and velocities), pumping in the divertor chamber (constrained by fuel processing and divertor design), core density (constrained by the desired fusion power and helium ash accumulation), separatrix density (constrained by divertor operation and density limits) and plasma confinement models are examined for the International Engineering Tokamak Reactor (ITER) Engineering Design Activity (EDA) for guidance in the definition of design requirements for the pumping and fueling systems. Various combinations of gas and pellet injection are found to meet the constraints for operation at 1500 MW of fusion power and 1 bar·l/s (5.3 × 1022 atoms/s) of DT pumping. Very low pumping reduces fuel processing requirements, but can lead to excessive helium accumulation depending on the particle transport properties. Isotopic tailoring of the fuel sources, e.g., 20–30% of the input fuel stream as tritium pellets and the rest as deuterium gas, can maintain the core fuel species mixture in the optimum range for fusion production (at least a 40–60 mixture) while reducing the tritium concentration in the edge region to 20–30%. This should reduce the tritium inventory in the plasma facing components, since that is typically governed by the fuel density mix near the plasma edge. A high density, low temperature ignited regime supported by deep pellet injection is shown to exist under some low confinement conditions.