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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
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Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Longcheng Liu, Ivars Neretnieks
Nuclear Technology | Volume 137 | Number 3 | March 2002 | Pages 228-240
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3270
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this study, we develop a mechanism-based model to take into account most of the important processes that may influence the dissolution behavior of spent fuel and subsequently the release behavior of nuclides within a defective canister in a final repository for high-level nuclear waste. The model is, in essence, a redox-controlled reactive transport model that provides a description of the mass transport of multiple species involved in both local equilibrium and kinetically controlled reactions in the system. The complexity of the kinetics of the various redox reactions involved and the requirement of the long-term prediction, however, make numerical implementation of the fully coupled model computationally inefficient. A series of scoping calculations was performed to highlight the local characteristics and behaviors of the system, and to provide a basis for refinement of the reactive transport model. The results indicate that the rapid buildup of hydrogen within the system is mainly attributed to corrosion of the cast-iron insert that primarily occurs under anaerobic conditions, rather than to radiolysis of water. The system that is rapidly in equilibrium with 50 bar hydrogen would then keep pH constant throughout the system. In addition, simulations suggest that reduction of dissolved hexavalent uranium by ferrous iron adsorbed onto the corrosion products and by dissolved H2 are the most important mechanisms to retard the release of uranium out of the canister. More importantly, it is found that the pseudo stationary state approximation may well be applied to the system. This greatly simplifies the numerical implementation of the reactive transport model.