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
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.
William Kuan, Mohamed A. Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | October 1995 | Pages 658-663
Tritium Processing | Proceedings of the Fifth Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion, and Isotopic Applications Belgirate, Italy May 28-June 3, 1995 | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30479
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma-facing component (PFC) materials directly affect tritium inventories by the creation of a characteristic set of volatile impurities inside the torus. Impurity creation processes were modeled and incorporated into the TritiUm Fusion Fuel cycLE dynamic Simulation, TRUFFLES, which simulates dynamic inventories in the tritium reprocessing systems.1 These surface processes include net erosion and “outgassing”. The estimated impurity outflow is coupled with the tritium reprocessing models in TRUFFLES to calculate inventories. Be and C were evaluated as examples of plasma-facing materials. It is found that for C a constraint limiting its net erosion rate is necessary in order to keep the tritium inventory in the cryopumps below a specified value. In contrast, Be may present no problem because of its non-production of volatile species when eroded during reactor power operation. “Outgassing” of H2O and the DT reflection coefficient were also investigated.
