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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Piyush Garg (Ohio State/Indian Inst of Technology (Kharagpur)),Yunfei Zhao, Carol Smidts (Ohio State)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1195-1209
Micro nuclear reactors have drawn increasing attention in the past ten years in the nuclear industry. However, compared with traditional nuclear power plants, micro-reactors differ in a number of aspects, such as digital human-machine interfaces, multi-unit operation, remote and autonomous operation. These differences hinder the applicability of current human reliability analysis methods in the context of micro-reactors, which then poses challenges to the licensing of advanced nuclear technologies and systems. The objective of this research is to fill the gap between the capabilities of current HRA methods and the characteristics of micro-reactors. In this research, the candidate performance shaping factors affecting decision-making of operators in the context of micro-reactors were identified, and preliminary analyses of their effects on operator performance were conducted. To be specific, the characteristics of micro nuclear reactors which pertain to human performance were first identified based on an investigation of the designs and applications of micro nuclear reactors. These characteristics represent the contextual feature space for various micro-reactor designs and applications. Then, the effect of these characteristics on human performance was investigated by referring to relevant studies for nuclear systems as well as other similar systems. The results in this research will help extend the framework of current HRA methods to enable them to be applicable to advanced micro-reactors.
