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.
Jichong Lei, Zhenping Chen, Jiandong Zhou, Chao Yang, Changan Ren, Wei Li, Chao Xie, Zining Ni, Gan Huang, Leiming Li, Jinsen Xie, Tao Yu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 7 | July 2022 | Pages 1223-1232
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.2018270
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reactor core design involves the search for and detailed calculation of a large number of schemes. Four different machine learning algorithms were used in this technical note: the C4.5 algorithm (an algorithm of decision trees), Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, and Multi-layer Perceptron, respectively. Uranium enrichment, the number of fuel rods containing burnable poison, and the concentration of burnable poison were taken as independent variables in the calculation. The k-eff unevenness coefficient, the radial power nonuniformity coefficient, the radial flux nonuniformity coefficient, and the core life were taken as the number of core parameters fulfilled (CPF). Machine learning models were constructed through learning the training data set, which consisted of a large number of assembly and core schemes whose nuclear design parameters were already known. Using the models, the CPF values for the unknown core data set (the test data set) were quickly predicted. The results show that the cross-validation accuracy of each algorithm was above 94% and that the C4.5 algorithm had the highest accuracy for the overall prediction of the CPF values. For the CPF value prediction of the test data set, the time for the training data set was within 10s, while the Random Forest algorithm has the highest prediction accuracy for CPF = 4 or CPF ≠ 4.