ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Meihua Zeng, Yong Song, Yunqing Bai, Minghuang Wang, Meisheng He, Jie Yu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 2 | November 2018 | Pages 238-247
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1469349
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The China lead-based research reactor (CLEAR-I) with 10 MW(thermal) will be built for the research of the accelerator-driven subcritical system (ADS) and lead-cooled fast reactor technology. Compared with other reactors, ADS has a spallation target placed in the reactor core center, which affects the refueling motion in the vessel. It is difficult to reach the fuel assemblies near the proton beam tube through the common vertical refueling gripper. In this technical note, a new cantilever-type and internal grasping gripper with defined refueling process was designed to handle all assemblies in CLEAR-I. The static and kinematics analyses of the gripper were carried out by ANSYS Workbench and MATLAB considering the influence of working in air and liquid metal. The structural and kinematic simulation results show that the design of the gripper is feasible for CLEAR-I. It provides an advanced refueling solution for the technical validation of ADS.
