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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Jul 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
July 2025
Latest News
Hash Hashemian: Visionary leadership
As Dr. Hashem M. “Hash” Hashemian prepares to step into his term as President of the American Nuclear Society, he is clear that he wants to make the most of this unique moment.
A groundswell in public approval of nuclear is finding a home in growing governmental support that is backed by a tailwind of technological innovation. “Now is a good time to be in nuclear,” Hashemian said, as he explained the criticality of this moment and what he hoped to accomplish as president.
Birchard L. Kortegaard
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 11 | Number 3 | May 1987 | Pages 671-683
Technical Paper | KrF Laser | doi.org/10.13182/FST87-A25042
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A control system is described that aligns the 96 beams of the Los Alamos National Laboratory KrF laser system to within a pointing accuracy of 5 µrad within 5 min and maintains the alignment in real time. This performance is made possible through a novel use of random noise. The 96 beams, together with optical benchmarks, are imaged on a single television (TV) camera. The pointing angles of those beams are estimated from the arithmetic means of the pixel coordinates within the beam images. The pixel intensities of each TV frame are mapped into a binary decision array based on whether or not the pixel intensity is above or below a threshold criterion. Existing, or introduced, random noise in the TV signal causes the contents of this array to vary from frame to frame, even when the actual beam is stationary. The beam positions are estimated from the pixel coordinates and their associated elements within this array. Finally, the beam angle estimates are updated from these position estimates, each TV frame, in combination with all previous estimates. This finds the contributions of the beam edges to the beam position by directly using pixels with intensities both above and below the beam threshold criteria, eliminating the need (possibly unrealizable) to do so by software interpolation algorithms. It does this very quickly, resulting in great data compression without use of computer time.