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Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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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!
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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.
J. N. Brooks, D. M. Gruen, A. R. Krauss, R. F. Mattas, A. B. DeWald
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 1275-1280
Impurity Control and Vacuum Technology | Proceedings of the Sixth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (San Francisco, California, March 3-7, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A39943
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new approach to impurity control involves the development of materials displaying both strong surface segregation of a low-Z component and high secondary ion fractions in the sputtering of that component. Key issues that have been studied with particular reference to copper-lithium alloys relate to the completeness of the overlayer, its rate of formation in a reactor environment, lowering of substrate sputtering and self-sputtering yields, durability of the overlayer, and depletion of the bulk alloy in the low-Z component. Other factors that must be considered in the materials selection process relate to response to disruptions, heat transfer, thermal stress, fabricability, radiation damage, activation, and tritium permeation. Copper-lithium alloys have been evaluated as a surface material for the impurity control system of the INTOR reactor. Both the medium-edge temperature limiter regime and the low-edge temperature divertor regime were examined. The analysis used TRIM code data to predict sputtering coefficients for copper-lithium with a 1.5 monolayer coverage of lithium. The REDEP code was used to evaluate the erosion performance for INTOR. Other properties such as fabrication and thermal performance were also briefly assessed. It was found from the standpoint of erosion that copper-lithium is a very good candidate material for the medium-edge temperature regime and also works well in the low-edge temperature regime. For the medium-edge temperature regime, the use of copper-lithium results in an almost negligible erosion rate over the entire surface.