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 Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
M. Iseli
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 629-633
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Materials Interaction and Permeation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1004
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Knowledge of the levels of tritium in the First Wall (FW) coolant and components of ITER is important for public and operator safety and waste management. To overcome the large uncertainty of plasma wall interaction and physical properties, a basic set of properties is theoretically calculated for the dissolved tritium atoms in a perfect Beryllium (Be) lattice. These properties are combined with models for tritium trapping by lattice imperfections including the equilibrium conditions between gaseous, dissolved and trapped hydrogen isotopes. The 3 models for trapping by impurities, radiation damage and surface defects are adjusted to experimental solubilities, to tritium release experiments from irradiated samples and to outgassing of hydrogen isotopes from the JET FW. An elastic lattice model evaluates the activation energy of diffusion. For the calculations, the code DIET (Diffusion, Implantation and Equilibrium Trapping) was developed, which includes tritium trapping with time-dependent trap concentrations of multiple trap sites. The sensitivity analysis, with the expected deviations from the basic properties provides confidence that tritium permeation is below one gram in ITER for a neutron load of 0.3 MWa/m2 within 10 years.