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
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
August 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Taking shape: Fusion energy ecosystems built with public-private partnerships
It’s possible to describe fusion in simple terms: heat and squeeze small atoms to get abundant clean energy. But there’s nothing simple about getting fusion ready for the grid.
Private developers, national lab and university researchers, suppliers, and end users working toward that goal are developing a range of complex technologies to reach fusion temperatures and pressures, confounded by science and technology gaps linked to plasma behavior; materials, diagnostics, and electronics for extreme environments; fuel cycle sustainability; and economics.
Staffan Qvist, Ehud Greenspan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 182 | Number 2 | February 2016 | Pages 197-212
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE14-135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For a reactor to establish a sustainable breed-and-burn (B&B) mode of operation, its fuel has to reach a minimum level of average burnup. The value of the minimum required average discharge burnup strongly depends on the core design details. Using the extended neutron balance method, it is possible to quantify the impact of major core design choices on the minimum required burnup in a B&B core. Relevant design variables include the fuel chemical form, nonactinide mass fraction of metallic fuel, feed-fuel fissile fraction, fuel rod pitch-to-diameter ratio (P/D), average neutron flux level, and fraction of neutron loss. Metallic fuels have been found to be the only viable fuel options for a realistic near-term B&B reactor. For the core designs we have studied, it was not possible to sustain B&B operation using oxide fuel that is not enriched, while nitride and carbide fuels may only work in highly ideal low-leakage systems at very high levels of discharge burnup and, hence, neutron irradiation damage. The minimum required burnup increases strongly with the total fraction of neutrons that is lost to leakage and reactivity control. The flux level has no effect on the neutron balance within the applicable range, and the average discharge burnup is also relatively insensitive to the fraction of fissile material in the feed fuel in the range from depleted uranium (0.2% 235U) to natural uranium (0.71% 235U). The minimum required burnup is most sensitive, in order of importance, to the fractional loss of neutrons, the Zr content in metallic fuel, and the fuel rod P/D. Changing the weight fraction of zirconium in metallic fuel by 1% (for example, from 10% to 9%) gives the same change in required discharge burnup as adjusting the P/D by 0.02 (for example, from 1.10 to 1.12).