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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
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!
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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.
Otasowie Osifo, Staffan Jacobsson Svärd, Ane Håkansson, Christofer Willman, Anders Bäcklin, Tobias Lundqvist
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 160 | Number 1 | September 2008 | Pages 129-143
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE160-129TN
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Decay heat is an important design parameter at the future Swedish spent nuclear fuel repository. It will be calculated for each fuel assembly using dedicated depletion codes, based on the operator-declared irradiation history. However, experimental verification of the calculated decay heat is also anticipated. Such verification may be obtained by gamma scanning using the established correlation between the decay heat and the emitted gamma-ray intensity from 137Cs. In this procedure, the correctness of the operator-declared fuel parameters can be verified.Recent achievements of the gamma-scanning technique include the development of a dedicated spectroscopic data-acquisition system and the use of an advanced calorimeter for calibration. Using this system, the operator-declared burnup and cooling time of 31 pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies was verified experimentally to within 2.2% (1) and 1.9% (1), respectively. The measured decay heat agreed with calorimetric data within 2.3% (1), whereby the calculated decay heat was verified within 2.3% (1). The measuring time per fuel assembly was ~15 min.In case reliable operator-declared data are not available, the gamma-scanning technique also provides a means to independently measure the decay heat. The results obtained in this procedure agreed with calorimetric data within 2.7% (1).
