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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Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Edoardo Cavalieri d'Oro, Michael W. Golay
Nuclear Technology | Volume 179 | Number 1 | July 2012 | Pages 117-128
Technical Paper | Special Issue on Safeguards / Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A14073
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Although in the United States and worldwide, the acceptance of nuclear systems has been abundantly regulated from a safety standpoint, the regulation of the nonproliferation performance of these systems still needs to be formalized. For nonproliferation, there are no regulations, formal license processes, or protocols to follow similar to the ones used by the nuclear sector to quantify and address safety risks. Consensus on how to address nonproliferation standards has not been achieved yet by regulators, designers, and policy makers, despite the urgent need to construct a clear framework to understand and formalize nonproliferation requirements of future and current nuclear systems.Appropriate tools and policies are needed to systematically quantify the standard of proliferation performance of nuclear energy systems, and to define the boundaries within which proliferation metrics can be considered acceptable.This paper tackles these issues by setting up a framework where risk, specifically the risk to covertly acquire special nuclear materials, can be used to evaluate the antiproliferation performance of nuclear systems. Specifically, it presents a treatment that, built upon analogy with the nuclear safety case, incorporates all the relevant features needed to set up a risk-informed licensing process for nuclear nonproliferation. The conceived framework can be used to assist the evaluation of the different solutions proposed internationally in order to strengthen the current nonproliferation regime.