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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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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Nuclear fuel cycle reimagined: Powering the next frontiers from nuclear waste
In the fall of 2023, a small Zeno Power team accomplished a major feat: they demonstrated the first strontium-90 heat source in decades—and the first-ever by a commercial company.
Zeno Power worked with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to fabricate and validate this Z1 heat source design at the lab’s Radiochemical Processing Laboratory. The Z1 demonstration heralded renewed interest in developing radioisotope power system (RPS) technology. In early 2025, the heat source was disassembled, and the Sr-90 was returned to the U.S. Department of Energy for continued use.
Kamron Fazel, Qi Li, Kostadin Ivanov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 469-474
Other Concepts and Assessments | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13465
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This research explores fusion cross section enhancements from electron screening within superconductors, and the feasibility of engineering a system to extract the energy from a superconductor fusion system. There have been claims that superconductors will exhibit superscreening which could significantly increase fusion cross sections. However, there is currently no widely accepted theory to explain superconductor electron screening. This research evaluated if a net energy gain could result from fusion events within superconducting PdD. With the widely accepted critical temperature of 11 K for PdD, no net energy gain would be expected from fusion reactions. However, net energy gain may be possible if a superconductor were developed with a transition temperature above 75 K. With the uncertainty of superconductor electron screening and the possibility of fusion energy extraction, an experiment was designed to close the knowledge gap. By bombarding deuterons onto PdD below the superconducting transition temperature, the superconductor screening contribution can be determined with a 38% average uncertainty of the screening energy with 95% confidence.