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 Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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!
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May 2025
Jan 2025
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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
International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference
Workshop
Wednesday, November 16, 2022|4:30–6:30PM MST|Honeysuckle
START is a web-GIS transportation decision-support tool developed by DOE’s Office of Integrated Waste Management (IWM) to enable visualization and analyses of geospatial data relevant to planning and operating a large-scale spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste transportation system. IWM is using START in a variety of applications, including: 1) assessing modal and routing options and associated risks, 2) evaluating emergency response training needs along routes, 3) providing enhanced stakeholder communication through maps and other visualizations, 4) performing environmental analyses including incident-free and incident-caused SNF transport dose estimates, and 5) supporting the integration of transportation logistics within analyses of the overall waste management system. START’s ease-of-use and flexibility has made it an ideal environment for users to perform “what-if” scenarios and to assess performance tradeoffs associated with various transportation alternatives. Moreover, users can download maps and analysis results as stand-alone graphical, geospatial, or tabular products or for inclusion in other reports or studies. This short course will demonstrate START’s capabilities within the context of presenting the tool’s underlying data and analysis functions, present sample START use-cases, and share information on further enhancements that are under development.
Those who choose to do so should bring a laptop to the course so that they can use the tool interactively during the session.
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