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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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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Latest News
Lightbridge announces first U-Zr fuel rod samples extruded at INL
Lightbridge Corporation announced today that it has reached “a critical milestone” in the development of its extruded solid fuel technology. Coupon samples using an alloy of zirconium and depleted uranium—not the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that Lightbridge plans to use to manufacture its fuel for the commercial market—were extruded at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex.
Joonhong Ahn, Myeongguk Cheon, Ehud Greenspan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 158 | Number 3 | June 2007 | Pages 408-430
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3851
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have developed a computation tool, WAste COMposition (WACOM) for performing a scoping study of the effects of the accelerator-driven transmutation of waste (ATW) system with a lead-bismuth-eutectic-cooled transmuter on actinide inventory and radiotoxicity reduction. WACOM consists of a simplified burnup model for a chain of 18 actinide isotopes and a fuel cycle model to evaluate high-level waste (HLW) generation from the reference ATW plant. Interpolation formulas for effective one-group cross sections as a function of the actinide mass fraction have been developed. Three kinds of HLW generation were considered: (a) HLW from uranium separation for light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel, (b) HLW from the partitioning process in multicycle ATW operation, and (c) the last core of the transmuter at the decommissioning of the ATW system. The latter two HLW sources resulting from multicycle ATW operation have been found to be greater than the first source. Potential benefits of ATW deployment have been found to be (a) reduction of the total actinide toxicity by a factor of 48 at the time of waste generation and (b) conversion of the actinide mixture into a more proliferation-resistant configuration, by effective transmutation of 239Pu, 241Am, and 237Np included in the LWR spent fuel. The total actinide radiotoxicity further decreases to 1/260 for the time period of 100 000 yr, which would improve the performance of the Yucca Mountain Repository.