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
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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
February 2025
Nuclear Technology
January 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Reboot: Nuclear needs a success . . . anywhere
The media have gleefully resurrected the language of a past nuclear renaissance. Beyond the hype and PR, many people in the nuclear community are taking a more measured view of conditions that could lead to new construction: data center demand, the proliferation of new reactor designs and start-ups, and the sudden ascendance of nuclear energy as the power source everyone wants—or wants to talk about.
Once built, large nuclear reactors can provide clean power for at least 80 years—outlasting 10 to 20 presidential administrations. Smaller reactors can provide heat and power outputs tailored to an end user’s needs. With all the new attention, are we any closer to getting past persistent supply chain and workforce issues and building these new plants? And what will the election of Donald Trump to a second term as president mean for nuclear?
As usual, there are more questions than answers, and most come down to money. Several developers are engaging with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or have already applied for a license, certification, or permit. But designs without paying customers won’t get built. So where are the customers, and what will it take for them to commit?
B. L. Cohen, H. N. Jow
Nuclear Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | December 1978 | Pages 381-388
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A32122
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The hazards from buried low-level radioactive waste are generically evaluated under conservative assumptions. It is assumed that transport mechanisms disperse the material randomly through the soil at an early time, thus bypassing all questions of transport through soil, hydrology, holdup processes, etc. in conventional evaluations. The transfer rate from soil to human ingestion is taken to be equal to that rate for naturally occurring isotopes of the same element, obtained from the daily ingestion intakes of Reference Man and geochemical abundances in sediments. Data are converted into the expected number of cancers by use of the BEIR report. The inhalation pathway is treated by assuming the composition of airborne dust to be the same as that of the soil, including the randomly dispersed radioactive material. The effects of a possible release into rivers are estimated by assuming that the probability of radioactive material getting into drinking water is equal to that for other materials in rivers. When the results are applied to the inventory at the Maxey Flats burial ground and reasonable assumptions are made about poorly identified materials, it is found that the total number of eventual cancers expected over the next 10 million years is less than one.