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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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
High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Y. Matsuda, N. Yokogawa, H. Yoshida, S. Konishi, Y. Naruse, F. Sakai, M. Yorozu, T. Ide, J. Mitsui
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 585-589
Tritium Processing | Proceedings of the Third Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion and Isotopic Applications (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 1-6, 1988) | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25197
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
At the Tritium Process Laboratory (TPL) in the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, the Thermal Diffusion process is applied to enrich and recover tritium diluted by the operation and experiments of the other apparatus installed in the gloveboxes. The apparatus is required to process 200-liter of hydrogen isotope mixture containing up to lg tritium by batch operation and enrich tritium to 90%. Preliminary studies were performed numerically as well as experimentally, and good agreement was obtained. Based on the results, the apparatus was designed. Major components are four 2.5m-high diffusion columns, reservoirs, pumps, active metal beds and a mass spectrometer. Whole apparatus was installed in the glovebox in the TPL by the end of 1987. The function of the apparatus was tested with H-D mixtures.
