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
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2025
Nuclear Technology
June 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
2021 ANS Annual Meeting Plenary SPeaker
Author "Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All"
Environmental ProgressPresident
Michael Shellenberger is author of the internationally best-selling new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (HarperCollins 2020), President of Environmental Progress, and a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment." Shellenberger is an energy expert who testifies regularly to Congress and foreign governments including in Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Netherlands, Argentina, and the Philippines, an advisor to the M.I.T. Future of Nuclear report, and an invited expert to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Michael has been called a “climate guru,” “North America’s leading public intellectual on clean energy,” and “high priest” of the environmental humanist movement for his writings and TED talks, which have been viewed over five million times. He has been an environmental, worker rights, and criminal justice activist for 30 years, and since 2016 has helped prevent the loss of over two dozen nuclear reactors around the world. And Shellenberger is a journalist and frequent contributor to New York Times, Forbes, and Quillette. He is currently writing a book on the addiction, mental illness, and housing crisis in California.
Last modified February 23, 2021, 2:16pm EST
