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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2021)
February 9–11, 2021
Virtual Meeting
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
Jan 2021
Jul 2020
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2021
Nuclear Technology
January 2021
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2020
Latest News
Notes on fusion
The ST25-HTS tokamak.
Governments around the world have been interested in fusion for more than 70 years. Fusion research was largely secret until 1968, when the Soviets unveiled exciting results from their tokamak (a magnetic confinement fusion device with a particular configuration that produces a toroidal plasma). The Soviets realized that tokamaks were not useful as weapons but could produce plasma in the million-degree temperature range to demonstrate Soviet scientific and technical prowess to the world.
Following this breakthrough, government laboratories around the world continued to pursue various methods of confining hot plasma to understand plasma physics under extreme conditions, getting closer and closer to the conditions necessary for fusion energy production. Tokamaks have been by far the most successful configuration. In the 1990s, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory produced 10 MW of fusion power using deuterium-tritium fusion. A few years later, the Joint European Torus (JET) in the United Kingdom increased that to 16 MW, getting close to breakeven using 24 MW of power to heat the plasma.
View Recipients
Downloads: Download Nomination Form
Nomination Deadline
August 1
Presented at the
Winter Meeting
Monetary Award
$2,000
The Alvin M. Weinberg Medal recognizes an individual for outstanding international technical and policy leadership in nuclear science and technology, and for consistently and effectively illuminating the human dimensions of the nuclear enterprise. The awardee must have demonstrated such achievements over a sustained period of several years.
The award consists of an engraved medal and a monetary award of $2,000. It is to be made no more frequently than once per year and is conferred normally during the ANS Winter Meeting.
Nominees may be from any nation, but they must not be deceased at the time the awardee is selected. Nominees need not be an ANS member.
The award was established in 1995 to honor Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg, one of the founders of the American Nuclear Society, and the 5th president of the Society, to provide international recognition for contributions to the understanding of the social implications of nuclear technology. It was funded in part by a $20,000 contribution from the Vietnamese-American Scholarship Fund and PAI Corporation on the occasion of Dr. Weinberg’s 80th birthday.
Nominations must include the completed nomination form accompanied by the following supporting documents:
Nomination forms and supporting documents (in Word or Adobe Acrobat) should be emailed to honors@ans.org.
Hard copies can be mailed to:
Honors and AwardsAmerican Nuclear Society555 N. Kensington AvenueLa Grange Park, IL 60526-5535
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