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
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
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.
Jeremy W. King, Danielle M. South, Craig M. Marianno, Sunil S. Chirayath
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 11 | November 2022 | Pages 1635-1648
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2076487
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Dry casks will be a prevalent spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage option until solutions for long-term storage or disposal are deployed. A dry cask storing 32 pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies will likely contain about 20 significant quantities of plutonium, so these structures require effective safeguards monitoring. An external remote monitoring system (RMS) is proposed to advance the current dry cask safeguards regime which relies on containment and surveillance. The objectives of this study were to assess the performance of the external RMS as a detection system and to develop a simulation approach for estimating measurements. Small-scale experiments of generic neutron source diversions mimicking SNF diversion from a dry cask were conducted and the nondetection probability was calculated for a variety of measurement times. MCNP simulations were carried out to assess the degree to which the measurement results could be predicted. A previous simulation methodology was advanced to consider uncertainty in the activity of sources being measured. The study concluded that the external RMS performs well as a neutron detection system and that MCNP simulation is a viable tool both for predicting measurements made with the external RMS and for calculating nondetection probabilities of hypothetical, generic diversion scenarios.