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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.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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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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
S. X. Zhao, F. Liu, S. G. Qin, J. P. Song, G.-N. Luo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 225-229
Materials Development | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A18081
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first attempt at developing chopped W fiber-reinforced W (Wf/W) composites without an engineered interface or inter-phase employing hot isostatic pressing (HIP) has been made in order to study the feasibility of the powder metallurgy (PM) fabrication methodology. Micro-structures and flexural properties of sintered compacts have been examined by an optical microscope (OM), a scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an electron back scattering diffraction (EBSD) instrument and three-point bending (3PB) tests. There are some chrysan-themum-like grains around each fiber in W matrices. Mechanical properties, namely strength and pseudo-plasticity, of the sintered compacts are far from satisfactory. Abnormal grain growth does not seem to have a preferential growing direction according to EBSD results. Possible causes for the abnormal grain growth and further mechanical property optimizations are hereby presented.
