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 Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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
Strong performances across the board
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Another year, another stellar performance by America’s nuclear plants. We’ve come to expect high capacity factors, and it’s a credit to the men and women of the profession. They’ve made routine something that was unimaginable not so long ago.
The decadal challenge for the nuclear enterprise now is to maintain this high level of operational excellence for the current fleet, while at the same time ushering in a new generation of technologies at scale. It will be a big job—but one that seems more and more likely with each passing day.
Philip E. MacDonald, Chan Bock Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 147 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 1-7
Technical Paper | Thoria-Urania NERI | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3510
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper provides an introduction to and a summary of the remaining papers in this issue of Nuclear Technology. The papers in this issue present the important results from a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored Nuclear Engineering Research Initiative (NERI) project to study the efficacy of the thorium-uranium dioxide (ThO2-UO2) once-through fuel cycle in current light water reactors. The project addressed fuel cycle neutronics and economics; ThO2-UO2 fuel manufacturing; the in-pile thermal/mechanical behavior of ThO2-UO2 fuel during normal, off-normal, and accident conditions; and the long-term stability of ThO2-UO2 waste. Results from this work show that a small-scale separation of the uranium and thorium will enhance the fuel reactivity and achievable burnup from uranium-thorium dioxide fuels. Under conditions that meet the thermal requirements in present pressurized water reactors (PWRs), a properly designed microheterogeneous fuel will have more reactivity than all-uranium fuel, and the overall production of plutonium is significantly reduced. The use of thorium as a host for actinide fuels when PWRs are used for actinide transmutation was also explored. It was also determined that there were no fundamental obstacles to converting the current plants that manufacture uranium oxide-only fuel to a mixed ThO2-UO2 fuel. Also, the in-service and transient thermal and mechanical performance of homogeneous ThO2-UO2-based fuels with respect to safety is generally equal to or better than that of all-uranium fuel. Furthermore, a mixed thorium-uranium dioxide spent fuel appears to be a much more stable waste form than uranium oxide spent fuel.