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
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
L. John Perkins
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 36 | Number 2 | September 1999 | Pages 219-233
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST99-A104
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With 180 MJ/g, antiprotons offer the highest stored energy per unit mass of any known entity. The use of antiprotons to promote fast ignition in an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsule and produce high target gains with only modest compression of the main fuel is investigated. Unlike standard fast ignition where the ignition energy is supplied by an energetic, short pulse laser, the energy here is supplied through the ionization energy deposited when antiprotons annihilate at the center of a compressed fuel capsule. This can be considered in-situ fast ignition as it obviates the need for the external injection of the ignition energy. In the first of two candidate schemes, the antiproton package is delivered by a low-energy ion beam. In the second, autocatalytic scheme, the antiprotons are preemplaced at the center of the capsule prior to compression. In both schemes, we estimate that ~1012 antiprotons are required to initiate fast ignition in a typical ICF capsule and show that incorporation of a thin, heavy metal shell is desirable to enhance energy deposition within the ignitor zone. In addition to eliminating the need for a second, energetic fast laser and vulnerable final optics, this scheme would achieve central ignition without reliance on laser channeling through halo plasma or Hohlraum debris. However, in addition to the practical difficulties of storage and manipulation of antiprotons at low energy, the other large uncertainty for the practicality of such a speculative scheme is the ultimate efficiency of antiproton production in an external, optimized facility. Estimates suggest that the electrical wall plug energy per pulse required for the separate production of the antiprotons is of the same order as that required for the conventional slow compression driver.