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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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!
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Latest News
El Salvador: Looking to nuclear
In 2022, El Salvador’s leadership decided to expand its modest, mostly hydro- and geothermal-based electricity system, which is supported by expensive imported natural gas and diesel generation. They chose to use advanced nuclear reactors, preferably fueled by thorium-based fuels, to power their civilian efforts. The choice of thorium was made to inform the world that the reactor program was for civilian purposes only, and so they chose a fuel that was plentiful, easy to source and work with, and not a proliferation risk.
Karen Colins, Yu Liu, Liqian Li, Kiranpreet Birdee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 201 | Number 2 | February 2018 | Pages 113-121
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1411718
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Proximate to nuclear power plant severe accidents, sustained high levels of gamma radiative flux are perilous not only to human health but also to the functionality of conventional radiation-monitoring devices. Effective accident mitigation presents a significant challenge because the gamma radiation adversely affects the means by which it is measured. Deployments of large numbers of radiation-hardened monitoring devices, required to meet the demands of adequate system reliability and the large spatiotemporal scales associated with such accidents, are expected to be prohibitively expensive. As an affordable alternative, this paper proposes usage of a wireless sensor network (WSN) built with unshielded low-cost integrated circuits (ICs) acting as consumable proportional sensors of gamma radiation dose. Adverse responses of ICs to damaging gamma radiation dose can be characterized statistically, in controlled laboratory experiments. In subsequent field application, responses of individual ICs, transmitted over a WSN to a remote computer, can be translated into local dose measurements using correlations obtained via the laboratory characterization. Experiments to characterize adverse response to radiation dose were performed on multiple complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor–based electrically erasable programmable read-only memory devices in a Gammacell 220 Cobalt-60 Irradiation Unit (60Co source) at the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. Details of the experiments, data analyses, and a small-scale prototype WSN are discussed in this paper. Outcomes of the experiments a nd analysis support the concept of using low-cost consumable ICs in a WSN to measure high levels of gamma radiation dose associated with nuclear power plant severe accidents.