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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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
Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
Konor Frick, Corey T. Misenheimer, J. Michael Doster, Stephen D. Terry, Shannon Bragg-Sitton
Nuclear Technology | Volume 202 | Number 1 | April 2018 | Pages 53-70
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1420945
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The increased penetration of intermittent renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar power can strain electric grids, forcing carbon-based and nuclear sources of energy to operate in a load-follow mode. For nuclear reactors, load-follow operation can be undesirable due to the associated thermal and mechanical stresses placed on the fuel and other reactor components. Various methods of thermal energy storage (TES) can be coupled to nuclear (or renewable) power sources to help absorb grid variability caused by daily load demand changes and renewable intermittency. Two TES techniques are investigated as candidate thermal reservoirs to be used in conjunction with a small modular reactor (SMR): a two-tank sensible heat storage system and a stratified chilled-water storage system. The goal when coupling the two systems to the SMR is to match turbine output and demand and bypass steam to the TES systems to maintain reactor power at approximately 100%. Simulations of integral pressurized water reactor dynamics are run in a high-fidelity FORTRAN model developed at North Carolina State University. Both TES systems are developed as callable FORTRAN subroutines to model the time-varying behavior associated with different configurations of these systems when connected to the SMR simulator. Simulation results reveal the sensible heat storage system is capable of meeting turbine demand and maintaining reactor power constant while providing enough steam to power four absorption chillers for chilled-water production and storage. The stored chilled water is used to supplement cooling loads of an adjacent facility.