ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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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
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!
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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.
Hiroshi Tojo, Takaki Hatae, Kiyoshi Itami
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 69 | Number 2 | April 2016 | Pages 546-554
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-179
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An in situ spectral calibration method for Thomson scattering systems, which uses a double-pass scattering system, has been developed for burning plasma experiments, such as ITER and DEMO. In such machines, space for diagnostics is very limited. For Thomson scattering diagnostics, laser injection equipment and collection optics should be installed in the same port because having multiple ports for a laser and collection optics requires a large amount of space. The design makes the scattering angle wide because the collection optics must be located near the laser entrance. In addition, measurements of high electron temperature (40 keV) are necessary. This paper presents an optimization of wavelength channels for the calibration method, in which two different spectra in the double-pass scattering are considered. Using the optimized wavelength channels achieves good accuracy in electron temperature and relative transmissivities even at wide scattering angles and high Te.
