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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
February 2025
Nuclear Technology
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Latest News
“Summer time” again? Santee Cooper thinks so
South Carolina public utility Santee Cooper and its partner South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) called a halt to the Summer-2 and -3 AP1000 construction project in July 2017, citing costly delays and the bankruptcy of Westinghouse. The well-chronicled legal fallout included indictments and settlements, and ultimately left Santee Cooper with the ownership of nonnuclear assets at the construction site in Jenkinsville, S.C.
Doo-Hyung Choe, Jae-Hyuk Baeg, Suk-Hwn Jung (Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction), Steve Yang (Doosan HF Controls Corp.)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 367-376
Rod Control System (RCS) is to control position of the neutron absorbing full-length rods (control rods or rods) in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). Although an RCS is classified as non-safety system, there is stringent requirement for its reliability and availability to avoid an unwanted reactor trip due to a single failure of the RCS. The unwanted reactor trip caused by a single failure of the RCS refers to Single Point Vulnerability (SPV) of the RCS, which is detrimental to an NPP’s continuous and healthy operations because of significant economic impact including operation & maintenance cost. Therefore, it is important to design and implement an RCS with high reliability, availability, operability, and maintainability that can tolerate faults and defeat the SPV for NPPs. For this reason, a modern and highly reliable RCS has been developed with the goal of reducing the SPV to zero and by applying disciplined specification and implementation of design as well as comprehensive Equipment Qualification (EQ) that are consistent with the 10 CFR50 Appendix B requirements. In the modernized RCS, full redundancy controller is used in both the logic and power cabinets. The other key improvements for this modernized RCS are the adoption of dual grippers (versus a single gripper used in the old RCS) and application of DC-hold function (not implemented in the old RCS). These design and implementation aims at completely eliminating the SPV and is fulfilled through analyzing 300 SPV cases in the operating history of the old RCS, which used non-redundant control components.