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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
AI and productivity growth
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
This month’s issue of Nuclear News focuses on supply and demand. The “supply” part of the story highlights nuclear’s continued success in providing electricity to the grid more than 90 percent of the time, while the “demand” part explores the seemingly insatiable appetite of hyperscale data centers for steady, carbon-free energy.
Technically, we are in the second year of our AI epiphany, the collective realization that Big Tech’s energy demands are so large that they cannot be met without a historic build-out of new generation capacity. Yet the enormity of it all still seems hard to grasp.
or the better part of two decades, U.S. electricity demand has been flat. Sure, we’ve seen annual fluctuations that correlate with weather patterns and the overall domestic economic performance, but the gigawatt-hours of electricity America consumed in 2021 are almost identical to our 2007 numbers.
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
April Wade is the Executive Director of the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium (VNEC) and the founder and President of Wade Strategic Communications (WSC), a public affairs firm. As E.D. for VNEC, Wade represents the nuclear industry in the commonwealth, advocating for additional opportunities in commercial power, nuclear medicine, academic research, and defense applications of nuclear energy.
WSC works with corporate and non-profit clients to develop goal-oriented strategies for navigating the state and federal political processes and communicating with stakeholder audiences. In more than 20 years as a Public Affairs practitioner, April has worked with clients ranging from oil and gas services firms, the nuclear power industry, rare earth mining, local and county governments, and women's causes.
Prior to founding Wade Strategic Communications, April served as the Communications Director for Louisiana Energy Services (LES/URENCO) on the National Enrichment Facility – the first major nuclear facility to be licensed in more than 30 years and the first ever to receive a combined construction and operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Committee.
April lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and their two children.
Last modified November 20, 2024, 3:03pm EST
