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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
J. W. Kim, T. C. W. Wong, F. K. W. Tang, A. Reid
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 4 | November 2011 | Pages 1427-1430
Detritiation and Isotope Separation | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12699
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For safe and efficient operation of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station's Tritium Removal Facility (DTRF), it is necessary to track the amount of operational tritium inventory within the DTRF's process systems. Previous methodology that tracks operational tritium inventory is based on performing a tritium mass balance and does not provide an instantaneous way to determine inventory in the DTRF. The estimate of operational tritium inventory using this method is susceptible to increasing cumulative error of approximately ±2.6% per day as the DTRF continues to operate. Current methodology attempts to compensate for this cumulative error by assuming a constant value for operational tritium inventory whenever Mass 5 is detected by mass spectroscopy of tritium drawoff gas. However, this assumption is flawed and introduces significant error to the estimation of operational tritium inventory. A new method based on temperature of the cryogenic high tritium distillation (HTD) process is proposed which can track operational tritium inventory in a more instantaneous fashion and provides a result with a constant error of ±14% that does not increase over time.