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
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Jul 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
July 2025
Latest News
DOE on track to deliver high-burnup SNF to Idaho by 2027
The Department of Energy said it anticipated delivering a research cask of high-burnup spent nuclear fuel from Dominion Energy’s North Anna nuclear power plant in Virginia to Idaho National Laboratory by fall 2027. The planned shipment is part of the High Burnup Dry Storage Research Project being conducted by the DOE with the Electric Power Research Institute.
As preparations continue, the DOE said it is working closely with federal agencies as well as tribal and state governments along potential transportation routes to ensure safety, transparency, and readiness every step of the way.
Watch the DOE’s latest video outlining the project here.
S. Massara, J. Tommasi, M. Vanier, O. Köberl
Nuclear Technology | Volume 149 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 150-174
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3587
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fast spectrum minor actinide (MA) burner designs, with high minor actinide loads and consumptions, have been assessed. As reactivity and kinetic coefficients are poor in such cores (low delayed neutron fraction and Doppler feedback, high coolant void coefficient), special attention has been paid to their dynamic behavior during transient conditions. A dynamics code, MAT4 DYN, has been expressly developed to study loss-of-flow, reactivity insertion, and loss-of-coolant accidents. It takes into account two fuel geometries (cylindrical and spherical) and two thermal-hydraulics models for the coolant (incompressible for liquid metals and compressible for helium).Three nitride-fuel configurations are analyzed according to their coolant: sodium and lead (both with pin fuel) and helium (with particle fuel). Dynamics calculations show that if the fuel nature is appropriately chosen, with sufficient margins during transients, then this can counterbalance the poor reactivity coefficients for liquid-metal-cooled cores, thus proving the interest of this kind of concept. On the other hand, the gas-cooled core dynamics is very badly affected by the high value of the helium void coefficient in a hard spectrum, this effect being amplified by the very low thermal inertia of the fuel particles. Hence, concepts other than a particle-bed fuel should be investigated for a helium-cooled fast-spectrum MA burner.