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
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS 2025)
May 4–8, 2025
Huntsville, AL|Huntsville Marriott and the Space & Rocket Center
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
May 2025
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
U.S. nuclear capacity factors: Stability and energy dominance
Nuclear generation has inertia. Massive spinning turbines keep electricity flowing during grid disturbances. But nuclear generation also has a kind of inertia that isn’t governed by the laws of motion.
Starting—and then finishing—a power reactor construction project requires significant upfront effort and money, but once built a reactor can run for decades. Capacity factors of U.S. reactors have remained near 90 percent since the turn of the century, but it took more than a decade of improvements to reach that steady state. The payoff for nuclear investments is long-term and reliable.
V. Loffelmann, J. Mlynar, M. Imrisek, D. Mazon, A. Jardin, V. Weinzettl, M. Hron
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 69 | Number 2 | April 2016 | Pages 505-513
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-180
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tomography inversion has been used routinely for processing outputs of plasma radiation diagnostics. Various tomographic algorithms have been developed, with those based on Tikhonov regularization being among the fastest while still providing reliable results. This paper presents a further speed optimization of the minimum Fisher Tikhonov regularization algorithm based on reducing iteration cycles used during the calculation. Ten to twentyfold speed gain is achieved compared to the original implementation. Robustness of the new method is demonstrated using both artificially generated data sets and real data from the soft X-ray diagnostics at the COMPASS tokamak. The advantage gained by the optimization is investigated in particular with respect to the possibility of real-time control of the plasma position; the option of impurity control is also discussed.