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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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
Dec 2025
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2026
Nuclear Technology
December 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
AI at work: Southern Nuclear’s adoption of Copilot agents drives fleet forward
Southern Nuclear is leading the charge in artificial intelligence integration, with employee-developed applications driving efficiencies in maintenance, operations, safety, and performance.
The tools span all roles within the company, with thousands of documented uses throughout the fleet, including improved maintenance efficiency, risk awareness in maintenance activities, and better-informed decision-making. The data-intensive process of preparing for and executing maintenance operations is streamlined by leveraging AI to put the right information at the fingertips for maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, engineers, and technicians.
Timothy S. Roth, A. Biancheria
Nuclear Technology | Volume 77 | Number 1 | April 1987 | Pages 50-59
Technical Paper | Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT87-A33951
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A computer graphics technique was used to measure cracks and other features of mixed-oxide fuel ceramographs to provide information useful for the modeling of fuel cracking and fragment movement. These measurements provided qualitative and quantitative information in several areas: crack formation and fuel-fragment movement, fuel-cladding gap size, crack size, crack orientation, radial distribution of crack porosity, and change in fuel volume (referred to as total fuel swelling) as a function of oxygen-to-metal ratio (O/M) and burnup. Examination of the ceramographs indicated that a crack starts on a free surface and propogates until it reaches another free surface. Thus, the first crack extends from one side of the fuel to the other, and succeeding cracks terminate on existing cracks or on the fuel surface. While crack formation was found to be independent of O/M, differences in crack healing at moderate power (19 kW/m) and high burnup (12 at.%) lead to a predominance of radial cracks for high O/M (∼1.96) fuel and both radial and circumferential cracks for low O/M (∼1.92) fuel. The different effects of circumferential and radial cracks on fuel behavior produce smaller postirradiation fuel-cladding gaps and larger cracks in the lower O/M fuel pins. Fuel swelling at intermediate burnup (∼8 at. %) is independent of O/M, but at high burnup (∼12 at. Vo) lower O/M fuel swells more. This swelling behavior may be related to a similar O/M dependence of retained fission gas.