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 Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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.”
J. Manuel Perlado, Lorenzo Malerba, Tomás Díaz de la Rubia
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 840-847
Inertial Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963717
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An extreme condition in Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) reactors will be the very high neutron dose rate from each burst of high gain targets. The effect of pulsed damage on the structural materials of the reactor chamber needs to be examined and its actual importance carefully assessed.
A first calculation of neutron spectra and intensities in one burst of directly driven target (pR ≈ 4 g.cm−2, 3 Hz) yields, for a ≈ 500 MJ shot of neutrons, a rate of ≈ 7 × 1020 n.s−1, the total time of deposition on the chamber walls being of ≈ 1 μs. This corresponds to a collisional parameter of 0.1 dpa/burst (in Fe), which gives an average damage rate of ≈ 3.8 dpa/year. The evolution in time of collisional damage is also presented.
Our work focuses on cubic silicon carbide (β-SiC) as a base for the next generation of low-activation materials. The Molecular Dynamics (MD) code MDCASK allows the description of the interaction of high energy recoils with the SiC lattice, by using a modification of the many-body semi-empirical inter-atomic Tersoff potential, merged with a repulsive binary potential obtained from ab initio calculations. A new assessment of previous works is presented. Preliminary values of threshold displacement energies are given and the observation of recombination barriers is reported. As a first step for a future intra- and inter-pulse damage study, by means of Kinetic Monte-Carlo (KMC) diffusion calculations, 3 and 5 keV Si-recoil-induced cascade simulations are analysed, discussing excitation and defects' characteristics in both sub-lattices: differences with respect to earlier works are found. Finally, the simulations of accumulations of up to 25 recoils of 500 eV and 1 keV are examined, in order to get a deeper insight into the damage state produced inside the material by intensive and prolonged irradiation in the absence of self-annealing.