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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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.
M. Reich, A. Bock, M. Maraschek, ASDEX Upgrade Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 4 | May 2012 | Pages 309-313
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-392
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For electron cyclotron current drive-based stabilization of neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs), it is crucial that the current deposition occurs as close to the island as possible; hence, its location needs to be accurately known. An NTM, rotating in the laboratory frame, causes fluctuations of magnetic flux measurable by Mirnov coils (dB/dt). Temperature perturbations in the vicinity of an NTM are caused by displaced flux surfaces and thus have the same frequency as the Mirnov signal but show a constant phase difference, which depends on the mode topology (poloidal and toroidal periodicity), on the toroidal displacement of the Mirnov coil with respect to the temperature measurement, and on the sign of the temperature change between the X-point profile and the O-point profile, which inverts somewhere inside the island. The sign flip of ΔTe is equivalent to a change of the phase difference between Te and magnetic reference by and therefore can be localized using the presented correlation method. Using the suggested algorithm, we can determine the rational surface that coincides with the radial island location with low latency and good reliability in real time from electron cyclotron emission temperature profiles when correlated with the appropriate magnetic fluctuations on a modern workstation computer.