ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
V. O’Donnell, T. Keya, A. Romans, G. Harvill, M. Andurkar, B. C. Prorok, S. M. Thompson, J. Gahl
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 2 | February 2023 | Pages 254-260
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2120321
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experimentally characterizing radioactive materials can be time consuming and expensive. This is mainly due to the size requirements of inspected specimens. Due to the growing interest in using additively manufactured components in next-generation reactors, there is an urgent need to develop new accelerated testing techniques with regard to characterizing radiation damage. This will ensure a more timely certification of the unique material structures inherent to additively manufactured parts. In this study, we investigate a means to reduce the time investment, and thus the human exposure to radioactive specimens in need of experimental characterization. We determine the feasibility of using ultra-small specimens in lieu of much larger specimens to characterize bulk material properties before and after irradiation. Experiments were conducted to investigate this technique and compare it to conventional bulk irradiations and characterization activities. It was found that discernable radiation damage existed in the ultra-small specimens even after relatively short neutron irradiation times. The results also demonstrate decreased radiation hardening in additive manufactured Inconel 625 material relative to its wrought forms.