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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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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.
Miguel Morales Gutierrez, Stefano Caruso, Nikitas Diomidis (Nagra)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 498-505
According to the Swiss disposal concept, the safety of a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is based on a multi-barrier system. The disposal canister is an important component of the engineered barrier concept, providing containment of the SNF for at least 10,000 years. This study evaluates the criticality safety and shielding of candidate disposal canister concepts, focusing on the fulfillment of the sub-criticality criterion and on limiting radiolysis processes at the outer surface of the canister which can enhance corrosion mechanisms.
The effective neutron multiplication factor (k-eff) and the surface dose rates are calculated for three different canister designs and material combinations for boiling water reactor (BWR) canisters, containing 12 spent fuel assemblies (SFA), and pressurized water reactor (PWR) canisters, with 4 SFAs. For each configuration, individual criticality and shielding calculations are carried out using the SCALE6.2 package (KENO-VI for criticality; MAVRIC for shielding). The results show that k-eff falls below the defined upper safety limit (USL) of 0.95 for all BWR configurations, while staying above USL for the PWR ones. For a final burnup of 55MWd/kgHM and 30y cooling time, the combined photon-neutron surface dose rate is well below the defined limit of 1Gy/h in all cases.