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
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
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.
Jorge H. Barón, Jorge E. Núñez McLeod, Selva S. Rivera
Nuclear Technology | Volume 134 | Number 2 | May 2001 | Pages 97-109
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3189
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Construction of the CAREM-25 full-size prototype, a very low power nuclear power station [25 MW(electric)], is scheduled to begin in Argentina in 2001. The CAREM-25 is designed based on principles of inherent safety, passive safety functions, and ease of operation. This paper analyzes the safety philosophy from the point of view of risk by performing a level-III probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) of this prototype. The specific PSA steps are discussed, including a specially developed method to obtain representative initiating events, system analysis by fault trees, event development in event trees, plant and containment response analysis, containment event tree development, consequence calculations, and risk representation. The PSA results are presented and discussed in terms of their own values as well as in comparison to other PSA results performed for larger nuclear power plants (NPPs). The advantages of the CAREM-25 from the risk point of view are studied in terms of the effective reduction of both the probability of severe accident sequences and the potential consequences of such sequences (radiological and emergency preparedness impact). The risk point of view also provides a perspective to analyze the impact of several design modifications in order to further reduce the residual risk of the NPP. These design modifications, several of which have already been included in the prototype, are discussed and evaluated.