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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
October 2025
Latest News
Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
Holger Seher, Guido Bracke, Gerd Frieling, Ingo Kock (GRS)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 35-40
The TOUGH2 code was modified by GRS with several repository-relevant processes (called TOUGH2-GRS) and used as a code for simulating multi-phase flow in porous media. For code development and quality assurance, an extensive program was implemented to demonstrate the correctness and reliability of TOUGH2-GRS.
The LLW/ILW repository “Endlager für radioaktive Abfälle Morsleben (ERAM)” located in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, was chosen to evaluate the impact of grid complexity on the results obtained by two-phase flow calculations with TOUGH2-GRS for C-14. Three grids with increasing complexity regarding spatial resolution and including multiple mine levels were generated and compared with single-phase-flow calculations with parameter datasets for ERAM, taken from the application for its decommissioning, which is currently under review.
The discharge of relevant nuclides is in all cases below the discharge modeled by single-phase simulations. The calculated discharge of C-14 depends on the complexity of model grids. The highest release of C-14 was calculated for the grid with medium complexity for a scenario with significant brine entry.
