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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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Jul 2024
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
ARPA-E announces $40 million to develop transmutation technologies for UNF
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
Athena A. Sagadevan, Sunil S. Chirayath
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 10 | October 2022 | Pages 1511-1521
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2057775
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It has become a common practice to store sufficiently cooled spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies in interim storage dry casks with passive cooling. These dry casks require nuclear safeguards monitoring because they contain plutonium. Past studies on dry cask modeling and simulations have shown that a remote monitoring system (RMS) situated inside the dry cask could continually monitor and detect the removal of even a single SNF assembly from the cask. This conceptual RMS design was tested by conducting laboratory-scale experiments using small-size 252Cf neutron sources. These small-size sources were surrounded by neutron-reflecting materials in the experiments to mimic the SNF assemblies as a surface neutron source to the fission chamber detectors of the RMS. Experimental and simulation results showed that the removal or diversion of even a single neutron source is detectable within 4 min with a probability of detection greater than 80%.