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
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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
Dec 2024
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Christmas Night
Twas the night before Christmas when all through the houseNo electrons were flowing through even my mouse.
All devices were plugged in by the chimney with careWith the hope that St. Nikola Tesla would share.
Alvin J. H. Lee, Lucas Wodrich, Dimitri Kalinichenko, Caleb S. Brooks, Tomasz Kozlowski
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 6 | June 2024 | Pages 1027-1041
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2276999
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The potential deployment of microreactors as a zero-emission source for critical applications within integrated energy systems such as microgrids has been gaining interest in recent years owing to the microreactors’ dispatchable nature, modular design, small site footprint, and carbon-free generation. A particularly high-value but challenging application with rapidly growing demand is in the deployment of high-performance computing (HPC) clusters within microgrids. In this work, a model of a HPC cluster in an energy-diverse microgrid is developed to determine the requirements of a technology-agnostic microreactor deployed for such a challenging application. The minute-resolution simulations revealed that the cluster’s electrical load fluctuation of up to 4.1 MW/min required a fast and responsive load-following capability. When the load-following capability of the microreactor was perturbed, the required microgrid storage capacity associated with having a 0.1 MW/min dispatchable microreactor decreased by two orders of magnitude as compared with load-following solely by energy storage devices, indicating that load-following capability in microreactors is of great value in such applications. The analysis methods described in this work can be extended to other microgrids, other HPC clusters, or other types of challenging applications, and can help microgrid planners in determining the storage size, output capacity, and ramping capabilities of the storage devices required for a given microgrid configuration.