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Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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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June 2025
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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.
ANS formed the Nuclear Waste Policy Task Force in 2019 to interact with policymakers, government representatives, and the public on spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste management issues.
The issue of nuclear waste policy is of paramount importance for the nuclear technology community. Effective radioactive waste management is necessary to allow for the application of nuclear technology. In particular, this refers to restricting the development of advanced reactors which would provide reliable, carbon-free energy if the waste issue is not sufficiently addressed.
In June 2019, ANS Nuclear Waste Policy Task Force Chair Steve Nesbit provided testimony for a hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The purpose of the hearing was to examine options for the interim and long-term storage of nuclear waste and to consider S.1234, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019.
Download a Copy of the Task Force Issue Brief:
Proposal for Progress on Nuclear Waste Management
ANS Nuclear Waste Policy Task Force Roster: