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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
Yang Hong Jung, Seung Je Baik, Young Gwan Jin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 1 | January 2021 | Pages 94-102
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1738795
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A radioactive corrosion product, Chalk River unidentified deposit (crud) was sampled and analyzed using an electron probe micro-analyzer with zinc-injected spent nuclear fuel rods (HU Unit 1, actual burnup 49 655 MWd/tonne U). Hot-cell facilities, a space for handling highly radioactive materials, were used as a way to collect crud deposited in the fuel rod cladding tube at a specific location of the spent fuel rod. A soft collection method for collecting crud using rubbings or adhesive tape was used to collect a sample, and a sample was collected with hard collection using a steel knife from the cladding tube of the fuel rod. The spent fuel rods were used for two cycles burned after zinc was injected into the primary coolant, which is known to inhibit the generation of crud. To compare the analysis results of the soft and hard collection methods for sampling crud, the results of the crud collected using an ultrasonic wave system were analyzed. The crud used in this study used burned fuel rods for two cycles after zinc ions were injected into the primary coolant. Based on the results, the Ni/Fe ratio can be estimated to be about 1.18. The Ni/Fe ratio value of 1.18 derived from this study is not much different from the Ni/Fe ratio values derived from nuclear power plants operating around the world.