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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Latest News
IAEA again raises global nuclear power projections
Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.
IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.
In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.
Ross Hays, Paul Turinsky
Nuclear Technology | Volume 186 | Number 1 | April 2014 | Pages 76-89
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-68
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The process of transitioning from the current once-through nuclear fuel cycle to a hypothetical closed fuel cycle necessarily introduces a much greater degree of supply feedback and complexity. When considering such advanced technologies, it is necessary to consider when and how fuel cycle facilities can be deployed in order to avoid resource conflicts while maximizing certain stakeholder values. A multiobjective optimization capability was developed around the VISION nuclear fuel cycle simulation code to allow for the automated determination of optimum deployment scenarios and objective trade-off surfaces for dynamic fuel cycle transition scenarios. A parallel simulated annealing optimization framework with modular objective function definitions is utilized to maximize computational power and flexibility. Three sample objective functions representing a range of economic and sustainability goals are presented, as well as representative optimization results demonstrating both robust convergence toward a set of optimum deployment configurations and a consistent set of trade-off surfaces.