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
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
Tae-Hoon Lee, Young Soo Kim, Hee-Sung Shin, Ho-Dong Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 176 | Number 1 | October 2011 | Pages 147-154
Radiation Measurements and General Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12549
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A passive neutron coincidence counter for nuclear material measurement of the advanced spent fuel conditioning process (ACP) has been developed by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) since 2003 and was deployed in a hot cell of the ACP Facility (ACPF) in 2005. The most dominant neutron source among the spontaneous fission nuclides contained in spent fuel is 244Cm. To obtain the neutron counting rates of the singles, doubles, and triples coincidences of the neutron counter with an increment of the 244Cm mass, a hot test of the neutron counter was performed in 2007 with several spent fuel rod-cuts in the ACPF hot cell. The source term of the spent fuel rod-cuts was obtained using the ORIGEN-ARP burnup simulation code, and a set of preliminary calibration curves of the neutron counter for 244Cm was generated. The calibration curves were also obtained from the results of an MCNPX code simulation, but there was a wide difference of [approximately]30% in the slope of the double-rate calibration curve between the measurements and the MCNPX results. Chemical analysis results of the spent fuel samples were obtained in September 2008, and it was found that the difference between the measurements and the MCNPX results is due to an error in the declared burnup since the chemical analysis burnups of the samples differ from the declared ones by [approximately]10%. The expected burnup of each rod-cut was also obtained from the results of self-multiplication correction for the 244Cm mass of the rod-cuts, and the difference between the expected burnup results and the chemical analysis results is <2%. This study shows high performance of the neutron coincidence counter for 244Cm measurements of spent fuel and also shows that the burnup of spent fuel samples can be obtained through a series of ORIGEN-ARP code simulations if it is possible to acquire the measurement data of neutron counting rates for 244Cm of the samples.