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 Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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
Argonne research aims to improve nuclear fuel recycling and metal recovery
Servis
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are investigating a used nuclear fuel recycling technology that could lead to a scaled-down and more efficient approach to metal recovery, according to a recent news article from the lab. The research, led by Argonne radiochemist Anna Servis with funding from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), could have an impact beyond the nuclear fuel cycle and improve other high-value metal processing, such as rare earth recovery, according to Argonne.
The research: Servis’s work is being carried out under ARPA-E’s CURIE (Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy) program. The specific project—Radioisotope Capture Intensification Using Rotating Packed Bed Contactors—started in 2023 and is scheduled to end in January 2026.
D. R. Harding, M. D. Wittman, N. P. Redden, D. H. Edgell, J. Ulreich
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 7 | October 2020 | Pages 814-830
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1812990
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Shadowgraphy and X-ray phase contrast (XPC) imaging are two techniques that are used for characterizing the deuterium-tritium ice layer in inertial confinement fusion targets. Each technique has limitations that affect how accurately they can characterize small crystalline defects and measure the ice thickness nonuniformities that may be only a few micrometers in height. The concern is that shadowgraphy may be overly sensitive to the shape and depth of defects in the ice surface and insufficiently sensitive to the shape of longer wavelength roughness, while XPC may be too insensitive to defects in the ice surface.
Multiple ice layers with different thicknesses (40 to 63 μm), thickness uniformities (peak-to-valley variations that range from < 2 to 12 μm), and crystal defects were analyzed using shadowgraphy and XPC techniques. The results from each method agree when the ice layer is uniformly thick and the crystal lacks defects. That agreement worsens as the number of defects in the surface of the ice layer increases, and the roughness (that is determined from a shadowgram image of the target’s limb) becomes greater than can be justified by the number of defects that are seen in the target’s front and rear surfaces. The XPC technique is considerably less sensitive to surface defects, in part because of the poorer dynamic range and image resolution compared to shadowgraphy. Localized regions of the ice layer that are thicker or thinner than the average thickness of the layer are reported by shadowgraphy to be smaller in height and footprint (by up to 30%) than by XPC. As a result, the two techniques report different ice layer thicknesses that can vary by up to 10%. Shadowgraphy, which results from two caustics that trace different paths through the target, and in theory, image the same ice/vapor surface (but reflect from either the vapor or ice side of the interface), did not consistently characterize the size or shape of ice features to be the same magnitude. The XPC technique provides the best assessment of low-mode (l < 7) roughness in the ice layer. Shadowgraphy results using the strongest caustic is best for detecting the presence of grooves in the ice, although not for quantifying the size of them. If multiple grooves are present, it is best to discard and reform the ice layer.