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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
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.
Arthur Nobile, Heidi Reichert, Roger T. Janezic, David R. Harding, Lance D. Lund, Walter T. Shmayda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 4 | June 2003 | Pages 522-539
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A299
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Preparations are currently underway at the OMEGA laser at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics (UR/LLE) to conduct direct drive laser implosion campaigns with inertial confinement fusion targets containing deuterium-tritium (DT) cryogenic ice layers. The OMEGA Cryogenic Target Handling System will fill plastic targets with high-pressure DT (150 MPa) at 300 to 500 K, cool them down to cryogenic temperature (<25 K), form the DT ice layer, and transport the targets to the OMEGA laser target chamber. Targets will then be shot with the 60-beam 30-kJ OMEGA laser. A tritium removal system has been designed to remove tritium from effluents associated with operation of the target chamber and its associated diagnostic antechambers, vacuum pumping systems, and target insertion systems. The design of the target chamber tritium removal system (TCTRS) is based on catalytic oxidation of DT and tritiated methane to tritiated water (DTO), followed by immobilization of DTO on molecular sieves. The design of the TCTRS presented a challenge due to the low tritium release limits dictated by the tritium license at UR/LLE. Aspen Plus, a commercial software package intended for the simulation and design of chemical processing systems operating at steady state, was used to simulate and design the TCTRS. A second commercial software package, Aspen ADSIM, was used to simulate and design the TCTRS molecular sieve beds, which operate at unsteady state. In this paper, we describe the design of the TCTRS and the benefits that were realized by use of the Aspen Plus and Aspen ADSIM software packages.