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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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.
K. H. Burrell
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 2 | October 2005 | Pages 1021-1041
Technical Paper | DIII-D Tokamak - Achieving Reactor Quality Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1057
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Development of the E × B shear stabilization model to explain the formation of transport barriers in magnetic confinement devices is a major achievement of fusion research. This concept has the universality needed to explain the H-mode edge transport barriers seen in limiter and divertor tokamaks, stellarators, and mirror machines; the broader edge transport barrier seen in VH-mode plasmas; and the core transport barriers formed in tokamaks with low or negative magnetic shear. These examples of confinement improvement are of considerable physical interest; it is not often that a system self-organizes to reduce transport when an additional source of free energy is applied to it. The transport decrease associated with E × B velocity shear is also of great practical benefit to fusion research. The fundamental physics involved in transport reduction is the effect of E × B shear on the growth, radial extent, and phase correlation of turbulent eddies in the plasma. The same basic transport reduction process can be operational in various portions of the plasma because there are a number of ways to change the radial electric field Er. An important theme in this area is the synergistic effect of E × B velocity shear and magnetic shear. Although the E × B velocity shear appears to have an effect on broader classes of microturbulence, magnetic shear can mitigate some potentially harmful effects of E × B velocity shear and facilitate turbulence stabilization. The experimental results on DIII-D and other devices are generally consistent with the basic theoretical models.