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
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.
T. A. Heltemes, G. A. Moses
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 927-931
Technical Paper | Inertial Fusion Technology: Drivers and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1612
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The introduction of magnetic cusp fields into the High Average Power Laser (HAPL) reactor design is to prevent target ions from interacting with the armor layer. Diverting the ions and preventing their impact on the chamber armor eases thermal design constraints considerably. The BUCKY code was used to simulate thermal loads for the candidate armor materials tungsten and silicon carbide.Parametric analysis was done to ascertain the peak temperature rise in the armor due to X-rays from the HAPL target thermonuclear ignition. Temperature values as a function of chamber armor radius were obtained using initial conditions of T0 = 600 °C and xenon buffer gas pressures of 66.7, 666.7 and 6666.1 mPa (0.5, 5 and 50 mTorr). The armor radius was decreased until thermal thresholds were met (2400 °C and 1000 °C for tungsten and silicon carbide, respectively) to determine the minimum allowable radius of the HAPL chamber.A second set of parametric simulations were performed at xenon gas initial pressures of 666.7 and 6666.1 mPa (5 and 50 mTorr) and temperature of 600°C to a time of 5 ms to observe the effect of re-radiation from the buffer gas on the surface temperature of tungsten and silicon carbide.