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
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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
G7 pledges support for nuclear at Italy meeting
The Group of Seven (G7) recommitted its support for nuclear energy in the countries that opt to use it at a Ministerial Meeting on Climate in Italy last month.
In a statement following the April meeting, the group committed to support multilateral efforts to strengthen the resilience of nuclear supply chains, referencing the goal set by 25 countries during last year’s COP28 climate conference in Dubai to triple global nuclear generating capacity by 2050.
Francisco A. Hernández, Pavel Pereslavtsev, Guangming Zhou, Béla Kiss, Qinlan Kang, Heiko Neuberger, Vladimir Chakin, Ramil Gaisin, Pavel Vladimirov, Lorenzo V. Boccaccini, Gandolfo A. Spagnuolo, Salvatore D’Amico, Ivo Moscato
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 5 | July 2019 | Pages 352-364
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1607695
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The helium-cooled pebble bed (HCPB) blanket is one of the two concepts proposed as a driver blanket for the European Union Demonstration Fusion Power Reactor (EU DEMO). In contrast to past conceptual design studies, in the frame of the current Power Plant Physics and Technology of the EUROfusion Consortium, the ongoing EU DEMO preconceptual design activities have adopted a holistic and integrated (i.e., systems engineering) design approach. As a consequence of this new approach, many interfaces and requirements have been identified, some of them driving the design of the blankets. This paper shows the advancements in the HCPB breeding blanket and describes the lessons learned after implementing the new approach. This new set of requirements has led us to reconsider fundamental aspects of the HCPB blanket design, especially in the way of how the heat is extracted from the blanket. Among others, the requirement to achieve a mature balance of plant (BOP) system plays a central role as a key design driver and has forced us to reduce pressure drops in the breeding blanket. In this regard, the blanket has been redesigned, leading to an enhanced concept based on single-module segments with a hexagonal matrix of fuel-breeder pins. Both the fuel-breeder pins and the first wall (FW) are equipped with turbulence promoters (augmented wall roughness in the fuel-breeder pins and V-ribs in the FW), following a similar idea as in the past MAGNOX, Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR), and Gas Cooled Reactor (GCR) programs in fission. This has led to minimizing the pressure drops while maximizing the heat transfer. Also, the blanket outlet temperature has been extended to 520°C, following the same principle as in Generation IV’s GCRs of maximizing the temperature difference across the core to minimize the reactor mass flow rate and thus the circulating power. All these features have led to a remarkably low plant circulating power (80 to 90 MW) and the required power per helium blower (5 to 6 MW), which potentially solves the key long-standing problem of the BOP technology readiness level for an ≈2.4-GW(thermal) helium-cooled DEMO reactor.