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
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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.
V. A. Soukhanovskii, W. R. Blanchard, J. K. Dong, R. Kaita, H. W. Kugel, J. E. Menard, T. J. Provost, R. Raman, A. L. Roquemore, P. Sichta
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 1 | January 2019 | Pages 1-17
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1502034
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A supersonic gas injector (SGI) has been developed for fueling and diagnostic applications on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). It is comprised of a graphite converging-diverging Laval nozzle and a commercial piezoelectric gas valve mounted on a movable probe at a low-field-side midplane port location. Also mounted on the probe is a diagnostic package: a Langmuir probe, two thermocouples, and five pick-up coils for measuring toroidal, radial, vertical magnetic field components and magnetic fluctuations at the location of the SGI tip. The SGI flow rate is up to 33.25 Pa m3/ (1.75 × 1022 euterium particles/s), comparable to conventional NSTX gas injectors. The nozzle operates in a pulsed regime at room temperature and a reservoir gas pressure up to 665 kPa (5000 Torr). The deuterium jet Mach number of about 4 and the divergence half-angle of 5 to 25 deg have been measured in laboratory experiments simulating the NSTX environment. Reliable operation of the SGI and all mounted diagnostics at distances 0.01 to 0.20 m from the plasma separatrix has been demonstrated in NSTX experiments. The SGI has been used for fueling of ohmic and 2- to 4-MW neutral beam injection–heated L- and H-mode plasmas. Fueling efficiency in the range 0.1 to 0.3 has been obtained from the plasma electron inventory analysis. The SGI-fueling–based plasma discharge scenarios enabling better density control have been developed.