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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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NN Asks: What did you learn from ANS’s Nuclear 101?
Mike Harkin
When ANS first announced its new Nuclear 101 certificate course, I was excited. This felt like a course tailor-made for me, a transplant into the commercial nuclear world. I enrolled for the inaugural session held in November 2024, knowing it was going to be hard (this is nuclear power, of course)—but I had been working on ramping up my knowledge base for the past year, through both my employer and at a local college.
The course was a fast-and-furious roller-coaster ride through all the key components of the nuclear power industry, in one highly challenging week. In fact, the challenges the students experienced caught even the instructors by surprise. Thankfully, the shared intellectual stretch we students all felt helped us band together to push through to the end.
We were all impressed with the quality of the instructors, who are some of the top experts in the field. We appreciated not only their knowledge base but their support whenever someone struggled to understand a concept.
Stuart A. Shiels, Chris Bagnall, Steven L. Schrock
Nuclear Technology | Volume 23 | Number 3 | September 1974 | Pages 273-283
Technical Paper | Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT74-A15919
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A technique that has been developed to measure the “carbon potential” of heat transport system sodium involves the equilibration of low-carbon Type 304 stainless-steel foils at a standard temperature of 704°C (1300°F). The equilibrium carbon concentration of the foil in parts per million is used as the measurement of the carbon potential of the sodium and is, in fact, a direct function of the carbon activity of the sodium. Relationships between the carbon potential, Cs, and carbon equilibrium values in Types 304 and 316 stainless steel, Ce, at temperatures, T, have been developed by experimentation. These correlations allow the surface carbon levels in system components to be predicted without knowing the transporting species or the thermodynamic relationships between the carbon in the sodium and in the steels. The data have been applied to the fast flux test facility (FFTF) primary system after making certain assumptions concerning the carbon potential of the FFTF primary sodium. The results suggest that there is little or no driving force for carburization, but that mechanical compensation will be needed for decarburization in some regions.
