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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
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver 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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Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
D. A. Bowers, J. R. Haines, M. D. McSmith, V. D. Lee
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 1138-1142
Ignition Device | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29496
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT) project, led by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, will employ a double null poloidal divertor as its primary means of energy and particle removal from the plasma. The fusion power handling capability of the divertor may represent the most severe constraint on the operating envelope for CIT. In addition to identifying this envelope based on divertor thermal performance, several studies aimed at improving this performance were examined. The reference divertor design concept employs small modules with pyrolytic graphite (PG) tiles. Studies of the sensitivity of the thermal performance of the passively cooled PG divertor design to separatrix sweeping parameters showed that a single pass sweep is near optimal for CIT conditions. An examination of the thermal performance of alternate materials found that some improvement (up to 20%) in the power handling capability of the divertor may be possible by using higher conductivity forms of PG, although the mechanical properties of these materials are not currently available. Alternate power handling approaches were examined and shown to have no significant improvement in thermal performance over the baseline passively cooled approach.