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
October 2025
Nuclear Technology
September 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
PR: American Nuclear Society welcomes Senate confirmation of Ted Garrish as the DOE’s nuclear energy secretary
Washington, D.C. — The American Nuclear Society (ANS) applauds the U.S. Senate's confirmation of Theodore “Ted” Garrish as Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
“On behalf of over 11,000 professionals in the fields of nuclear science and technology, the American Nuclear Society congratulates Mr. Garrish on being confirmed by the Senate to once again lead the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy,” said ANS President H.M. "Hash" Hashemian.
Brandon Distler, Steve Baker, Jordan Gladden (Transware Enterprises), Hatice Akkurt (EPRI)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 925-930
Cask Loader, an EPRI software system is a relational database program that facilitates the automated selection of candidate spent fuel assemblies for placement into dry cask storage canisters from spent fuel pools. Cask Loader allows users to compute the decay heat values for an extended burnup range using a modified regulatory guidance approach. Due to increased efficiency in operation, the number of assemblies with higher burnups increased exponentially within the past two decades. The NRC Regulatory Guide 3.54, published in 1999, set applicability limits for burnup that are below the current operational experience. Subsequently, within the past decade, the need for extending the burnup ranges significantly increased. Only two measurement points are available for extended burnup range. Analyses were performed for these two points and extended by including additional typical and hypothetical PWR and BWR assemblies. For this study, decay heat values were computed using Cask Loader and ORIGEN and were then compared against each other. The computational results showed that compared to ORIGEN, Cask Loader overestimates the decay heat values without any exception and therefore can be considered conservative in its estimation of decay heat values for high burnup range. In this paper, the comparative decay heat values are presented.