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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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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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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.
R. Koch
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 275-285
Heating and Current Drive | Proceedings of the Tenth Carolus Magnus Summer School on Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13514
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The heating of plasmas by fast ions, with a focus on Neutral Beam Injection (NBI), is reviewed. First, the need of auxiliary heating and current drive systems in fusion machines is outlined. For the particular case of tokamaks, the limitations of ohmic heating are discussed. The different ways of generating fast particles in plasmas are presented. The principle of operation of neutral beam injectors is explained. Positive-ion (PNBI) and negative-ion (NNBI) based concepts are discussed. Next, the physical processes by which the beam transfers energy to the plasma, namely ionisation and slowing-down are described. For both, an elementary theory is given, whereby simple approximations to the distribution functions of beam injected ions and of alpha particles in reactors are obtained. Applications of NBI to heating, current drive and rotation drive are reviewed and the prospects of NBI for ITER are commented.