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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2027 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
October 31–November 4, 2027
Washington, DC|The Westin Washington, DC 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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World Nuclear Energy Day is coming next week
The annual day of celebrating nuclear energy is right around the corner. On December 2, World Nuclear Energy Day will be recognized internationally through workshops, panel discussions, dinner meetings, and special performances focused on educational outreach, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems with nuclear energy.
Scott M. Richards (Univ of Tennessee), Brandon R. Grogan (ORNL)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 899-905
The Inverse Depletion Theory (INDEPTH) code is one of the tools being used to analyze the traditional nondestructive assay (NDA) measurements and verify the initial enrichment, burnup, and cooling time values of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) declared by facilities. The INDEPTH code attempts to reconstruct the initial enrichment and operating history by using the Oak Ridge Isotope Generation (ORIGEN) code to simulate irradiation and cooling of the fuel. This work examined the sensitivity of INDEPTH results to variations in irradiation conditions. Three types of measured data were simulated to identify possible sources of systematic error. An absolute gamma measurement with a gross neutron count produced more accurate answers than either the relative gamma measurement or the absolute gamma measurement by itself in most cases. However, long shutdown times between irradiation cycles were found to greatly affect the accuracy, with the absolute gamma plus gross neutron counts case losing the most accuracy. In these cases, the added neutron data either did not significantly improve the results or made them worse.