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
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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
May 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Fusion Energy Week begins today
Fusion is riding a surge of attention that began in December 2022 when researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility achieved fusion ignition. The organizers of Fusion Energy Week—a group called the U.S. Fusion Outreach Team—on the other hand, trace fusion development back 100 years to the doctoral research of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered that stars, including our Sun, are mostly made of hydrogen and helium, which in turn led to the understanding that those elements are the “fuel” of potential fusion energy systems on Earth. In recognition of Payne-Gaposchkin’s birthday—May 10—the U.S. Fusion Outreach Team plans to hold a “grassroots celebration of fusion energy” May 6–10, 2024, and annually during the second week of May.
Yonezo Tsujikura
Nuclear Technology | Volume 136 | Number 2 | November 2001 | Pages 141-157
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3234
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
When designing the safety system for the next generation of pressurized water reactors (PWRs), it is essential to rationalize the safety system by taking factors such as safety, reliability, and economy into account. To do so, a comprehensive methodology for designing an accident mitigation system was developed on the basis of the following studies. Threats to the reactor core, which are inherent to PWRs, were systematically analyzed. Following this, efforts to specify the requirements needed to mitigate the threats were made with the specification of components composing the mitigation systems. On the basis of a loss-of-coolant accident as an example of the severest accident, thermohydro analyses without any mitigation systems were made to determine the requirements needed to keep the core safe. Information related to the system's design parameters were successfully obtained. On the basis of these studies, candidates for mitigation systems that respond in accordance with the scales and phases in progress of accidents were systematically selected and discussed. In the future, the methodology presented herein may be extended to cover the structuring of overall plant safety systems.