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
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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.
S. Tina Ghosh, Hossein Esmaili, Alfred Hathaway, Nathan Bixler, Dusty Brooks, Matthew Dennis, Douglas Osborn, Kyle Ross, Kenneth Wagner
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 3 | March 2021 | Pages 441-451
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1875737
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper provides an overview of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) project to develop a technical report summarizing the most important insights from its three State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA) project uncertainty analyses (UAs). The NRC, with Sandia National Laboratories, has completed three UAs as part of the SOARCA project, for three different operating reactor types in three different locations in the United States. The SOARCA UAs included an integrated evaluation of uncertainty in accident progression, radiological release, and off-site health consequence projections. These three UAs are currently documented in three detailed reports. The NRC is currently developing a technical overview report summarizing the important insights from the three SOARCA UAs. The purpose of the NRC summary is to provide a useful reference for regulatory applications that require the evaluation of off-site consequence risk from beyond-design-basis-event severe accidents. Examples include regulatory and cost-benefit analyses that rely on off-site consequence projections using the MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System (MACCS) code, in conjunction with MELCOR for source term characterization. This paper provides an overview and discusses the overall scope and methodology of the SOARCA UAs and the approach for the summary report currently under development.