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
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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
Retrieval of nuclear waste canisters from a borehole
Borehole disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level waste (HLW) uses off-the-shelf directional drilling technology developed and commercialized by the oil and gas sectors. It is a technology that has been gaining traction in recent years in the nuclear industry. Disposal can be done in one or more boreholes (including an array) drilled into suitable sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic host rocks. Waste is encapsulated in specialized corrosion-resistant canisters, which are placed end to end in disposal sections of relatively small-diameter boreholes that have been cased and fluid-filled. After emplacement, the vertical access hole is plugged and backfilled as an engineered barrier.
Xiang M. Chen, Virgil E. Schrock, Per F. Peterson, Philip Colella
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 1520-1524
Inertial Fusion Reactor Studies | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29935
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The HYLIFE-II ICE reactor uses molten salt, Flibe (Li2BeF4), as a liquid blanket material. After the microexplosion of the D-T capsule in the center of the chamber the emitted x rays ablate a thin layer of the liquid and generate a high temperature plasma. This paper uses a second order Godunov numerical method to solve for the gas dynamics of the ablated material in the central cavity. Because the initial ablation has very small characteristic length scale (about 10 microns), a time varying mesh spacing is adapted. The equation of state for Flibe vapor is used in the calculation along with the parameters for the HYLIFE-II design. The results reveal that the gas dynamic response is sensitive to the initial energy deposition in the liquid and that two- dimensional shock effects are very important in determining the pressure and density field in the central cavity. By neglecting radiation heat transfer, the current calculation results give a conservative estimation of the shock strength.
