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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
May 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The busyness of the nuclear fuel supply chain
Ken Petersenpresident@ans.org
With all that is happening in the industry these days, the nuclear fuel supply chain is still a hot topic. The Russian assault in Ukraine continues to upend the “where” and “how” of attaining nuclear fuel—and it has also motivated U.S. legislators to act.
Two years into the Russian war with Ukraine, things are different. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022, authorizing $700 million in funding to support production of high-assay low-enriched uranium in the United States. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy this January issued a $500 million request for proposals to stimulate new HALEU production. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 includes $2.7 billion in funding for new uranium enrichment production. This funding was diverted from the Civil Nuclear Credits program and will only be released if there is a ban on importing Russian uranium into the United States—which could happen by the time this column is published, as legislation that bans Russian uranium has passed the House as of this writing and is headed for the Senate. Also being considered is legislation that would sanction Russian uranium. Alternatively, the Biden-Harris administration may choose to ban Russian uranium without legislation in order to obtain access to the $2.7 billion in funding.
Başak Saraç-Lesavre
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 9 | September 2021 | Pages 1366-1376
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1884492
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Making new nuclear investments is a challenging task. Their “value” is neither given nor stable: It is constantly being reformulated through processes of evaluation and, therefore, of valuation. The paper follows the specific uses of a standard method, the levelized cost of electricity, by different centers of calculations during a period marked by the intense scrutiny of nuclear energy policy and of the adoption of alternative nuclear fuel cycle technologies: from the George W. Bush administration through the beginning of the Barack Obama administration. Rather than concentrating on the finality of those calculations and their subsequent effects on the reordering of spent nuclear fuel as “waste” or “value,” the author develops the notion of “style of revaluation” and shows how concerned actors enacted different logics of valuation and embedded different audiences in their uses of the same calculative device. The paper characterizes two styles of revaluation related with this period. In the first style, referred to here as the “monetary figures of dissent,” a multitude of disagreements over political and moral values associated with alternative fuel cycle technologies are translated into into the language of economic expertise and monetary figures, while policy makers are designated as the audience for the calculations. In the second style, which the author refers to as the “return-on-investment,” financial investor at large is considered as the audience for the calculations, and investment is to be guided by the morality of the return-on-investment. Such assessments are critical for science and democracy. It is crucial that their designers and users, whether those are academics, practitioners, or policy makers, acknowledge and articulate moral and political values they inscribe in them.