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Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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
NRC approves transfer of Vallecitos to North Star for D&D
By an order dated April 25, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the transfer of ownership of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s Vallecitos Nuclear Center to NorthStar Group Services for nuclear decontamination, decommissioning, and environmental site restoration.
Kevin Skinner, Greg Housley, Colleen Shelton-Davis
Nuclear Technology | Volume 176 | Number 2 | November 2011 | Pages 296-308
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A13304
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Was the death of the Yucca Mountain repository the fate of a technical lemon or a political lemon? We must be careful not to let this debate lure us away from capitalizing on the fruits of the project. One such fruit is a system for safely sealing packages containing radioactive nuclear waste. In March 2009, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) successfully demonstrated the Waste Package Closure System (WPCS), a full-scale prototype system for closing waste packages (WPs) that were to be entombed in the now-abandoned Yucca Mountain repository. This paper describes the system and components, which INL designed and built, to weld the closure lids on the WPs, nondestructively examine the welds using four different techniques, repair the welds if necessary, mitigate crack-initiating stresses in the surfaces of the welds, evacuate and backfill the WPs with an inert gas, and perform all of these tasks remotely. As a nation, we now have a proven method for securely sealing nuclear WPs for long-term storage - regardless of whether the future destination for these WPs will be an underground repository. Additionally, many of the WPCS's features and concepts may benefit other remote nuclear applications.