ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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!
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
J-F. Villard, M. Schyns
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 1 | January 2011 | Pages 86-97
Technical Paper | NPIC&HMIT Special / Radiation Measurements and Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A11487
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Optimizing the life cycle of nuclear systems under safety constraints requires high-performance experimental programs to reduce uncertainties on margins and limits. In addition to improvement in modeling and simulation, innovation in instrumentation is crucial for analytical and integral experiments conducted in research reactors.Significant efforts have been made recently to improve in-pile instrumentation for the benefit of material testing reactors. The quality of nuclear research programs obviously relies on an excellent knowledge of their experimental environment, which constantly calls for better online determination of neutron and gamma flux. But the combination of continuously increasing scientific requirements and new experimental domains - brought, for example, by Generation-IV programs - also necessitates major innovations for in-pile measurements of temperature, dimensions, pressure, or chemical analysis in innovative mediums.To face these challenges, the CEA (French Nuclear Energy Commission) and the SCK.CEN (Belgian Nuclear Research Centre) have combined their efforts and now share common developments through a Joint Instrumentation Laboratory.Significant advances have thus been obtained in the field of in-pile measurements, on one hand by the improvement of existing measurement methods (for example, a unique fast neutron flux measurement system using fission chambers with 242Pu deposit and a specific online data processing has been developed), and on the other hand by the introduction in research reactors of original techniques such as optical dimensional measurements or acoustical fission gas release measurements.