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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Feb 2025
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2025
Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Hongbin Zhang, Ronaldo Szilard, Ling Zou, Haihua Zhao
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 174-187
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1496694
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing a new rulemaking on emergency core system/loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) performance analysis. In the proposed rulemaking, designated as 10 CFR 50.46c, the NRC puts forward an equivalent cladding oxidation criterion as a function of cladding pretransient hydrogen content. The proposed rulemaking imposes more restrictive and burnup-dependent cladding embrittlement criteria; consequently, more fuel rods need to be analyzed under LOCA conditions to maintain the safety margin, in contrast to the current practice for which only one hot rod needs to be analyzed. New multiphysics analysis methods are required to provide a thorough characterization of the reactor core in order to identify the locations of the limiting rods and quantify safety margins under LOCA conditions. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program has initiated a project to develop multiphysics analytical capabilities, called LOTUS, to support the industry in the transition to the proposed rule. An approach to uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis with LOTUS was developed. A typical four-loop pressurized water reactor plant model was developed for RELAP5-3D simulations with inputs generated from core design and fuel performance analyses, and uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis were performed with 17 uncertain input parameters. The maximum equivalent cladding reacted ratio and peak clad temperature ratio were selected as the figures of merit (FOMs). Pearson, Spearman, partial correlation coefficients, and Sobol indices were considered for all of the FOMs in the sensitivity analysis.