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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.
S. M. An, K. S. Ha, B. T. Min, H. Y. Kim, J. H. Song
Nuclear Technology | Volume 189 | Number 2 | February 2015 | Pages 133-142
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-24
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ablation kinetics of special concrete, which has been developed as one of the candidate protecting materials for the EU-APR1400 ex-vessel core catcher, was investigated experimentally. Metallic corium and stainless steel melts were generated using an induction heating technique in a cold crucible and used for the interaction tests with the special concrete. The melt delivery system was designed to prevent the melt impingement effect and chemical changes of the concrete specimen owing to preheating during the melt generation process. The metallic corium melts above the activation temperature interacted with the concrete specimens very intensively, which led to an abrupt increase of concrete ablation. However, in the interactions with the steel melts, the concrete specimens were ablated slowly even though the melt temperatures were higher than the metallic corium melts. A postanalysis of the chemical compositions and microstructures of the ingot with the ablated concrete was performed to understand the ablation phenomena. It was found that the U and Zr contained in the metallic corium melt reacted with the oxygen released by the dissociation of ferric oxides in the special concrete above the activation temperature. As a result of the exothermic reaction, both the ablation rate and the reaction layer coefficient were increased with a higher melt temperature and exhibited higher values than those in the interactions with the steel melt. Moreover, it was verified that the oxidation quotients of U and Zr are higher than those of Fe and Cr.