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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Jul 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
July 2025
Latest News
Hash Hashemian: Visionary leadership
As Dr. Hashem M. “Hash” Hashemian prepares to step into his term as President of the American Nuclear Society, he is clear that he wants to make the most of this unique moment.
A groundswell in public approval of nuclear is finding a home in growing governmental support that is backed by a tailwind of technological innovation. “Now is a good time to be in nuclear,” Hashemian said, as he explained the criticality of this moment and what he hoped to accomplish as president.
Michal Cihlář, Slavomír Entler, Tomáš Czakoj, Václav Dostál, Jan Prehradný, Pavel Zácha
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 2 | February 2023 | Pages 104-116
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2120301
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Current tritium production might not be enough for all future fusion research reactors. Different approaches for tritium production have been studied in the past, one of which was tritium production using the accelerator-driven subcritical systems. This idea was dismissed in the 1990s as uneconomical when compared to using existing commercial light water reactors. This paper presents changes to the basic idea, mainly the use of a molten spallation target and molten lithium breeding volume. This advanced design is described, optimized for tritium yield using the MCNP 6.2.0 code, and compared between different accelerators.
The optimized configuration consists of a 1-GeV, 200-mA proton accelerator, a molten Pb-Bi eutectic spallation target with a length of 60 cm and a diameter of 75 cm, and molten lithium breeding volume with dimensions of 500 cm in length and 900 cm in diameter. As calculated, the annual production of the proposed accelerator-driven tritium production system could be as high as 350 g of tritium with the optimized configuration.