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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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!
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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.”
M. Scott Greenwood, Ben Betzler
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 4 | April 2019 | Pages 417-430
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1531619
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fluid-fueled nuclear reactors, such as molten salt reactors (MSRs), have recently gained significant interest. These advanced reactors represent a potential revolutionary shift in the implementation of nuclear power, and as a broad class of reactors, they have the potential to directly address many U.S. energy policy objectives. Fuel that is dissolved in the coolant requires methods to account for the birth, decay, and transport of fission products not only in the core but also throughout the loop and any auxiliary systems, such as off-gas, to which liquid fuel flows, gaseous products are carried, or solid particulates plate out. System models are particularly well suited to explore the wide range of phenomena that are associated with fluid-fueled systems, especially for safeguards analysis. However, before system dynamics can be explored, the compositions of fission products of the salt throughout the loop must be determined as they drive the dynamic behavior of a reactor.
This paper describes the derivation of a modified point-kinetics model for obtaining a first-order approximation of the behavior of a salt-fueled system in which neutron precursors and fission products are born in the fuel-salt and transported outside the core. This paper also provides verification of the model using a steady-state analytic solution and provides additional cases exploring the response under transient cases. This model establishes a baseline model that can be used to explore the dynamic response of fluid-fueled reactors and to investigate important safeguards issues such as mass accountability of source terms. The model is implemented in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory–developed, Modelica-based TRANSFORM library that was developed to investigate various aspects of advanced energy systems.