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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Educator training webinar looks at lunar nuclear power
The American Nuclear Society recently hosted a new webinar in its ongoing Educator Training series titled, “Powering the Lunar Frontier: Nuclear Energy for the Artemis Era.” This webinar featured a presentation from Harsh Desai, chief commercialization officer at Zeno Power and chair of the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Space Nuclear Taskforce.
Paul W. Humrickhouse, Brad J. Merrill
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 1 | January 2015 | Pages 167-178
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-799
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ARIES-ACT1 (Advanced and Conservative Tokamak) is a 1000-MW(electric) tokamak design featuring advanced plasma physics and divertor and blanket engineering. Some relevant features include an advanced SiC blanket with PbLi as coolant and breeder; a helium-cooled steel structural ring and tungsten divertors; a thin-walled, helium-cooled vacuum vessel; and a room-temperature, water-cooled shield outside the vacuum vessel. We consider here some safety aspects of the ARIES-ACT1 design and model a series of design-basis and beyond-design-basis accidents with the MELCOR code modified for fusion. The presence of multiple coolants (PbLi, helium, and water) makes possible a variety of such accidents. We consider here a loss-of-flow accident caused by a long-term station blackout (LTSBO), an ex-vessel helium break into the cryostat, and a beyond-design-basis accident in which a LTSBO is aggravated by a loss-of-coolant accident in ARIES-ACT1's ultimate decay heat removal system, the water-cooled shield. In the design-basis accidents, we find that the secondary confinement boundaries are not challenged, and the structural integrity of in-vessel components is not threatened by high temperatures or pressures; decay heat can be passively removed.