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
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2025
Nuclear Technology
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Christmas Night
Twas the night before Christmas when all through the houseNo electrons were flowing through even my mouse.
All devices were plugged in by the chimney with careWith the hope that St. Nikola Tesla would share.
David Gandy, Craig Stover (EPRI), Hongqing Xu, Vernon Pence (NuScale Power), Steven Lawler, Matthew Cusworth (Nuclear AMRC)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 372-379
Many of the same manufacturing/fabrication technologies that were employed for light water reactors (LWR) plants built 30-50 years ago are also being employed today to build advanced light water reactors (ALWRs). Manufacturing technologies have not changed dramatically for the nuclear industry even though higher quality production processes are available which could be used to significantly reduce overall component manufacturing/fabrication costs. New manufacturing/ fabrication technologies that can accelerate production and reduce costs are vital for the next generation of plants (Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and GEN IV plants) to assure they can be competitive in today’s and tomorrow’s market.
This project has been assembled to demonstrate and test several of these new manufacturing/ fabrication technologies with a goal of producing critical assemblies of a 2/3rds scale SMR reactor pressure vessel (RPV). Through use of technologies including: powder metallurgy-hot isostatic pressing, (PM-HIP), electron beam welding, diode laser cladding, bulk additive manufacturing, advanced machining, and elimination of dissimilar metal welds (DMWs), EPRI, the US Department of Energy, and the UK-based Nuclear-Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (Nuclear-AMRC) (together with a number of other industrial team members) will seek to demonstrate the hypothesis that critical sections of an SMR reactor can be manufactured/fabricated in a timeframe of less than 12 months and at an overall cost savings of >40% (versus today’s technologies). Major components that will be fabricated from PM-HIP include: the lower reactor head, upper reactor head, steam plenum, steam plenum access ports and covers, and upper transition shell.
The project aims to demonstrate and test the impact that each of these technologies would have on future production of SMRs, and explore the relevance of the technologies to the production of ALWRs, SMRs, GEN IV, Ultra-supercritical fossil, and supercritical CO2 plants. The project, if successful, may accelerate deployment of SMRs in both the USA and UK, and ultimately throughout the world for power production.
