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 Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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
Sep 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
November 2024
Nuclear Technology
October 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
From remediation to production: The DOE’s Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative
On July 28, 2023, the Department of Energy launched its Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, an effort to repurpose underutilized DOE-owned property—portions of which were previously used in the nation’s nuclear weapons program—into the sites of clean-energy generation.
Yafen Liu, Rui Yan, Yang Zou, Xuzhong Kang, Ruimin Ji, Bo Zhou, Shihe Yu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 2 | November 2018 | Pages 203-212
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1474703
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Zero-power experiments are very important parts in design verification for all reactor types. In the 1970s, in China, at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (then, Shanghai Institute of Nuclear Research), a Critical Experiment Device (cold) was established for research on the physics characteristics of the molten salt reactor (MSR), and a series of zero-power experiments was successfully performed; related experimental results were obtained later. The device consisted mainly of graphite moderator and powdered BeF2 – UF4 / ThF4 fuel and could achieve a maximum power of 200 W. The current work is focused on criticality properties with various core configurations and fuel arrangements of this device and the worths of the cadmium rods used in the device. Evaluations on the agreement of calculation results with experimental data showed good results. Discrepancies between the calculation results and the experimental data might be primarily caused by the simulated outermost fuel element positions not being exactly the same as the experimental arrangements and the unmodeled instruments used in the experiments. The findings in this work can be considered a step of verification of simulation methods and calculations for a cold MSR.