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
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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
Uncertainty contributes to lowest uranium spot prices in 18 months
A combination of plentiful supply and uncertain demand resulted in spot pricing for uranium closing out March below $64 per pound, with dips down to about $63.50 during mid-March—the lowest futures prices in 18 months, according to tracking by analysis firm Trading Economics. Spot prices have also fallen steadily since the beginning of 2024. Meanwhile, long-term prices have held steady at about $80 per pound at the end of March, according to Canadian front-end uranium mining, milling, and conversion company Cameco.
Akito Ipponsugi, Kazunari Katayama, Taku Matsumoto, Shogo Iwata, Makoto Oya, Youji Someya
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | May 2024 | Pages 253-259
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2271228
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several fusion plants plan to utilize two high-temperature and high-pressurized water coolant systems. Because of the high hydrogen-isotope mobility in high-temperature metal, tritium will inevitably transfer from the plasma side to the secondary coolant through the primary coolant. From the viewpoints of fuel control, tritium safety, and social acceptance, it is compulsory to investigate the tritium concentration dependence of permeation phenomena experimentally. Therefore, this study conducted a protium permeation experiment instead of tritium, which mocked the situation where the tritium concentration in the primary loop was extremely high. Considering the results in the previous tritium permeation research by the present authors, the tritium permeation behavior was likely proportional to the first power of the tritium concentration. Then, based on these experiments and references regarding the tritium permeation rate and water detritiation system (WDS) design, tritium concentration was computed in both loops. In this calculation condition, the primary and secondary loops reached about 0.4 TBq/kg and 167 MBq/kg during 3-year operations, respectively. Also, it was found that the required feed rate to keep the tritium concentration at 1 TBq/kg was 46.5 kg/h, which is less than the existing WDS specification.