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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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
First astatine-labeled compound shipped in the U.S.
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
Bin Chen, Jiangang Li, Yanlan Hu, Teng Wang, Chao Zhou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 2 | February 2020 | Pages 95-101
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1690927
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High-temperature superconductor (HTS) current leads are important components of the EAST and CFETR tokamaks, which are responsible for operating the high parametric current. HTS current leads are made of Bi-2223/Ag-Au alloy tapes, which have the characteristics of slow quench propagation speed and weak quench signal. Traditional thermometers are easily damaged by the high voltage from the current leads, and the terminal voltage signal cannot reflect the hot spot changes of current leads in real time. In this paper, a novel quench detection method based on optical frequency domain reflection technology is proposed. Temperature variations of HTS can be obtained in real time by demodulating the Rayleigh scattered spectrum from the distributed optical fiber attached to the surface of HTS stacks. This paper describes a quenching experiment for one pair of 1-kA small current leads. The external thermal disturbance is increased to explore the quench propagation of HTS current leads under the condition of a self-field, 77 to 80 K air and conduction combined cooling method. From the experimental results, the temperature distribution map of the whole HTS lead is obtained. Compared with the quench voltage, the spectral shift of the fiber appeared to be about 2 s ahead, and the hot spot position can be located with 1-cm accuracy.
