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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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
Feb 2025
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2025
Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Antonio F. Dias, Laurance D. Eisenhart, Ronald E. Engel, Lance J. Agee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 121 | Number 3 | March 1998 | Pages 346-358
Technical Paper | RETRAN | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2846
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The rod ejection accident in a pressurized water reactor and the control rod drop accident in a boiling water reactor are analyzed in this paper, both in a best-estimate (realistic) and a conservative manner. CORETRAN, a modern three-dimensional time-dependent nodal code, is used for all simulations. In all considered cases, the resulting peak fuel enthalpy is far less than the current licensing limit of 180 cal/g. The advantage of using a three-dimensional code over the classical point-kinetics approach can be summarized: The power peak is nominally a factor of 10 times lower, and the pulse is 10 times wider. Therefore, a three-dimensional approach predicts a much milder event. Sensitivity studies were performed to identify the influence of several parameters on the reactivity insertion simulations.
