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
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Jeffery F. Latkowski, Javier Sanz, Jasmina L. Vujic
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1470-1474
Safety and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963156
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inertial fusion energy (IFE) will operate and magnetic fusion energy (MFE) power plants may operate in pulsed modes. The two confinement schemes, however, will have quite different time periods. Typical repetition rates for IFE power plants will be 1-5 Hz. MFE power plants will likely ramp up in current for about 1 hour, shut down for several minutes, and repeat the process. Traditionally, activation calculations for IFE and MFE power plants have assumed continuous operation and used either the “steady-state” (SS) or “equivalent steady-state” (ESS) approximations.1-5 It has been shown, however, that the SS and ESS methods may not yield accurate results for all radionuclides of interest.6 The present work expands that of Sisolak, et al. by applying their formulae to conditions which might be experienced in typical IFE and MFE power plants. In addition, complicated, multi-step reaction/decay chains are analyzed using an upgraded version of the ACAB radionuclide generation/depletion code.7 Our results support previous work in the conclusion that the SS method is suitable for application to MFE power plant conditions.6 We also find that the ESS method generates acceptable results for radionuclides with half-lives more than a factor of three greater than the time between pulses. For components that are subject to 0.05 Hz (or more frequent) irradiation (such as the first wall and coolant), use of the ESS method is recommended. For components or materials that are subject to less frequent irradiation (such as high-Z target materials), pulsed irradiation calculations should be used.
