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
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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.”
Marius Zamfirache, Anisia Bornea, Ioan Stefanescu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 4 | May 2017 | Pages 590-594
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2016.1273698
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ICSI Rm. Valcea is the leading research institute involved in the Romanian heavy water detrititiation program. ICSI has built a Tritium Removal Facility which is an experimental pilot plant for deuterium and tritium separation - its main objectives being to demonstrate detritiation technology followed by implementation at the CANDU nuclear power plant in Cernavoda.
Within isotope separation installations using a cryogenic distillation process, the required gas purity must be high to avoid the risk of impurity condensation. A preferred and recommended purification process is solidifying impurities over a large material area heat exchanger device. Such a system is usually a regenerative type to ensure continuous operation. Gas Purification is achieved either by means of reversible heat exchangers or thermal regenerators.
Reversible exchangers and regenerators have a periodic operation, a warm period and a cold period. During the warm period, the heat exchanger or regenerator mass heat up cooling the purified gas, while in the cold period, the cold waste gas heat up the exchanger or the regenerator.
Essentially, the impurity solidification purification process is the same for both the reversible exchanger and regenerator, but because of their differences the process description will be different and so also the design method. Due to periodic operation of a regenerative system the process is unsteady, its description utilizing highly complex mathematics. For this reason it is of particular interest to have a very well developed mathematical description of non-stationary heat exchange processes, incorporating simultaneous mass and heat exchange processes taking place in the regenerative systems.
This paper presents a conceptual scheme of a purification unit consisting of two stages (the first being a drying system followed by an advanced cryogenic purification). A theoretical analysis of the second stage of the process will be developed. Due to cyclic operation (cooling, retention, cleaning) the process is carried-out in the non-stationary regime, thus the mathematical description is complex but needed to design such a system.
Also presented is a theoretical analysis of the purification of an impurity-laden gas, using the calculation model developed with the proposed regenerative system.
