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
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
January 2026
Latest News
ORNL–General Atomics partnership on ceramic matrix composites
A memorandum of understanding has been signed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) with the objective of working together on advanced ceramic matrix composite materials for applications in extreme environments. Materials that can withstand extreme temperatures, radiation, corrosion, and mechanical stress are required in aerospace, defense, energy, and other sectors.
According to the agreement, the San Diego–based GA-EMS will use resources from ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility to develop “scalable, efficient manufacturing techniques for extreme environment materials including precursors, fibers, composites, and coatings utilized in carbon/carbon (C/C), carbon/silicon carbide (C/SiC), and SiC/SiC composite systems.”
Robert B. Hayes
Nuclear Technology | Volume 197 | Number 2 | February 2017 | Pages 209-218
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT16-98
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Some quality considerations for use in isotopic dating are presented to identify and correct heretofore unidentified overestimate scenarios. These include to a lesser degree the statistical interpretation issues with linear-least-squares fitting results but more importantly the isotope effect in the individual components of the isochron coefficient ratios. By taking into consideration the isotope effect (differential mass diffusion rates) when measuring isotopic ratios from very old samples, the distribution dependency in the coefficient ratios will cause a bias if isotopic diffusion rates are not identical throughout a sample. The isotope effect is that isotopes having a smaller atomic mass will diffuse faster throughout a medium than will their heavier counterparts causing concentration gradients of their ratios even when there are no contributions from radioactive decay. The application to Rb/Sr dating is evaluated and shown to result in expected age overestimates when isotopic ratios are employed to linearize the isochron. A suggested method to test for this effect is argued to require rigorous statistical analysis. An associated optimal sampling technique would involve using single-grain etching. It is also shown that the only method to fully eliminate the isotope effect is to not use isotopic ratios at all in radioisotopic dating as the physics do not require the use of isotopic ratios for geochronological dating. However, without the ratios, the data are inherently noisy.