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
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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.
Joakim Karlsson, Thomas Elevant
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 33 | Number 3 | May 1998 | Pages 341-349
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A36
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An heuristic approach has been adopted to obtain empirical scaling formulas for the dependence of neutron emission on predefined machine parameters, such as applied auxiliary heating power, plasma current IP, and toroidal magnetic field BT. The results are intended to be used to predict the neutron emission before each discharge. These formulas are of interest in their own right but more practically can be used as input to control software to pre-set the optimum precollimator apertures for neutron diagnostics such as spectrometers. Formulas have been obtained for data from plasma pulses during the years 1992 and (1994 + 1995), i.e., before and after the divertor installation and major modifications of the Joint European Torus (JET) vessel.Obtained scaling formulas for moderate beam power PNB show neutron emission after installation of the divertor to be lower than before. However, for high beam power, the scaling laws predict as large and even larger neutron emissions for the (1994 + 1995) neutral beam (NB)-heated plasmas as compared to 1992 plasmas. The dependence on radio-frequency (rf) heating power Prf is significantly larger in the scaling laws deduced prior to the divertor phase than after, which implies more efficient heating in 1992. With the exception of combined NB- and rf-heated plasma pulses, the dependence on plasma current has increased moderately after the modifications of JET. For all observations with combined NB and rf heating, the dependence on Prf is quite small, and the neutron production for this category of discharges is dominated by NB heating.A set of scaling laws is found that predicts the neutron emission within a factor of 2, which is consistent with our objective.