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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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
May 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Akira Suda, Minoru Obara, Akira Noguchi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 11 | Number 3 | May 1987 | Pages 548-559
Technical Paper | KrF Laser | doi.org/10.13182/FST87-A25035
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Atmospheric pressure operation of the electron-beam (e-beam)-excited KrF laser can greatly reduce the design constraints on a large-aperture laser module in the megajoule-class system as an inertial confinement fusion driver. The krypton-rich and Kr/F2 mixtures are suitable for the atmospheric pressure operation because these can produce high specific output energy without serious reduction of the intrinsic efficiency compared with conventional argon-rich mixtures. A 50-ns e-beam generator was used to pump the KrF laser oscillator by which fundamental studies of the KrF laser with atmospheric pressure krypton-rich mixtures were performed. A larger apparatus, using another 65-ns e-beam generator, demonstrated the specific output energy of 6.6 J/ℓ from a Kr/F2 mixture with an intrinsic efficiency of 6%. The latter apparatus was then used as an oscillator-amplifier system to investigate the amplifier characteristics of the KrF laser because the atmospheric pressure krypton-rich mixture is useful for large amplifier modules. In this oscillator-amplifier experiment, the power efficiency (extracted intensity divided by excitation rate and active length) in excess of 10% was obtained for krypton-rich mixtures.