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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.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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!
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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.
Tunc Aldemir
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 155 | Number 3 | March 2007 | Pages 497-507
Technical Note | Mathematics and Computation, Supercomputing, Reactor Physics and Nuclear and Biological Applications | doi.org/10.13182/NSE07-A2680
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Probabilistic dynamics (or continuous event tree approach) is a methodology used for the probabilistic risk assessment of systems where statistical dependence between failure events may arise because of indirect coupling through the controlled/monitored physical process and/or direct coupling through software/hardware/human intervention. Both the continuous and discrete time/space forms of the probabilistic dynamics frameworks assume that the set of possible trajectories describing the evolution of the system as a function of time in its state-space consists of measurable (and hence compact) subsets. Using a reduced-order boiling water reactor model, it is shown that this assumption may not be valid for systems of practical interest to nuclear engineering. The consequences of violating the measurability assumption on the probabilistic model accuracy are illustrated for the discrete time/state-space approach. Some guidelines for the choice of time/state discretization are also proposed.