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
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
Feb 2025
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2025
Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
A. B. Rothman, D. G. Graczyk
Nuclear Technology | Volume 167 | Number 3 | September 2009 | Pages 410-420
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9080
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the ammonium diuranate (ADU) process, UF6 is reacted with water, and the acidic solution of uranyl fluoride is treated with aqueous ammonia to precipitate ammonium polyuranate for subsequent reduction to UO2 and production of fuel pellets for commercial nuclear reactors. Our experiments simulated adding aqueous ammonia to the reaction products of UF6 and water in typical ADU processes. Chemical and X-ray diffraction analysis of products from the experiments are consistent with postulated chemical equilibria in which solids with structures close to that of ammonium polyuranate are formed from co-precipitation of the NH4+(aq) cation with (previously unreported) anions of the form UO2F3-x(OH)x-(aq). More efficient separations of solid products were obtained at NH4OH:UF6 ratios of 19 or greater, with x closer to the value of 3 for the hypothetical formation of pure ammonium polyuranate. Supplementary experiments in the current study and a previous study in our laboratory indicated that nominal uranium concentrations of 90 mg/l in the filtrate resulting from such separations could be reduced to microgram per liter levels by batch mixing a 1-to-2.5 aqueous diluate of the filtrate with the Diphonix® ion exchange resin. Our study further demonstrated that reaction of the purified NH4OH-NH4F diluate with aqueous Ca(OH)2 at 80 to 90°C could produce essentially uranium-free CaF2 and an ammonia distillate, as useful waste-conversion end products from a modified ADU process.