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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
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!
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Latest News
G7 pledges support for nuclear at Italy meeting
The Group of Seven (G7) recommitted its support for nuclear energy in the countries that opt to use it at a Ministerial Meeting on Climate in Italy last month.
In a statement following the April meeting, the group committed to support multilateral efforts to strengthen the resilience of nuclear supply chains, referencing the goal set by 25 countries during last year’s COP28 climate conference in Dubai to triple global nuclear generating capacity by 2050.
Joseph C. Martz, Franz J. Freibert, David L. Clark
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 1 | December 2021 | Pages S266-S285
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1913035
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We describe the wartime challenges associated with the rapid developments in plutonium chemistry and metallurgy that were necessary to produce the core of the Trinity Device. Beginning with microgram quantities of plutonium metal late in 1943, initial measurements showed a wide and confusing variance in density and other properties. These confusing results were the first clues to the astounding complexity of plutonium. As this complexity was revealed, it introduced new challenges for the fabrication of kilogram-scale parts. In a remarkable period from January 1944 to June 1945, Manhattan Project scientists made rapid progress in understanding plutonium chemistry and metallurgy. By early 1945, they had discovered five of the six ambient-pressure phases of unalloyed plutonium and reported the density of these phases to within a value of 0.1 g/cm3 of those accepted today. They solved the stability problem introduced by these phases with a rapid alloy development program that ultimately identified gallium as the preferred element to stabilize the δ-phase, producing a plutonium alloy still of scientific and technical interest today. We conclude with a description of postwar developments in these areas, including applications of wartime plutonium metallurgy to civilian applications in nuclear reactors. We dedicate this paper to the memory of Ed Hammel, the Manhattan Project plutonium metallurgist whose previous description and documentation of plutonium history during the war has been essential in our research.