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
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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.
Borut Mavko, Andrej Prošek, Francesco D’auria
Nuclear Technology | Volume 120 | Number 1 | October 1997 | Pages 1-18
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35427
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Quantitative evaluation of thermal-hydraulic code uncertainties is a necessary step in the code assessment process, especially if best-estimate codes are utilized for licensing purposes. With the goal of quantifying code accuracy, researchers in the past developed a methodology based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) that consisted of qualitative and quantitative code assessment. Here, the FFT-based method is applied to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)-Standard Problem Exercise (SPE)-4 test results with pre- and posttest code calculations of the IAEA-SPE-4 experiment. Four system codes (ATHLET, CATHARE, MELCOR, and RELAP5) are used for calculations of the experiment, performed at the PMK-2 facility, which simulated a cold-leg break in a WER-440 plant. The results show that the posttest calculations had better accuracy than did the pretest calculations. None of the best three pre- and posttest calculations were able to predict core dryout, which was the most important phenomenon observed during the test. The results obtained can give an objective indication of the capability of the aforementioned codes in predicting relevant variables characterizing the transient (too few experimental parameters may limit full application of the FFT-based methodology).