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.
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
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2024
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.
Jinkai Wang, Modi Lin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 203 | Number 3 | September 2018 | Pages 221-231
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1448671
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Many countries have paid more attention to seismic risk in nuclear power plants recently. Recent U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission actions have increased the expectation that major efforts will be required to expand plant Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA) models to include seismic events. PRA is a powerful tool to identify the seismic vulnerabilities in a nuclear power plant. This study introduces a method to quantify seismic risk in a nuclear power plant. A special seismic risk quantification tool was developed to perform uncertainty simulation for seismic occurrence frequencies and failure events probabilities in this work. Compared with some other software, some significant improvements were made in simulation scope and data processing method. This study took a nuclear power plant under construction in China as an example. The seismic vulnerabilities were identified and the risk insights were proposed to further reduce the risk. In order to optimize the plant design, a risk-informed seismic PRA was applied in the design for the first time. An optimization strategy is proposed to make the plant more cost effective and competitive in the market. This study provides a very useful guidance for plant design optimization in the future.