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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott 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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Latest News
Smarter waste strategies: Helping deliver on the promise of advanced nuclear
At COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, a clear consensus emerged: Nuclear energy must be a cornerstone of the global clean energy transition. With electricity demand projected to soar as we decarbonize not just power but also industry, transport, and heat, the case for new nuclear is compelling. More than 20 countries committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy forecasts that the country’s current nuclear capacity could more than triple, adding 200 GW of new nuclear to the existing 95 GW by mid-century.
G. D. Samolyuk, Y. N. Osetsky, R. E. Stoller
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 1 | January 2017 | Pages 52-59
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST16-118
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tungsten and its alloys are the primary candidate materials for plasma-facing components in fusion reactors. The material is exposed to high-energy neutrons and the high flux of helium and hydrogen atoms. In this work we have studied the properties of vacancy clusters and their interaction with H and He in W using density functional theory. Convergence of calculations with respect to modeling cell size was investigated. It is demonstrated that vacancy cluster formation energy converges with small cells with a size of 6 × 6 × 6 (432 lattice sites) enough to consider a microvoid of up to six vacancies with high accuracy. Most of the vacancy clusters containing fewer than six vacancies are unstable. Introducing He or H atoms increases their binding energy potentially making gas-filled bubbles stable. According to the results of the calculations, the H2 molecule is unstable in clusters containing six or fewer vacancies.