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
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Mar 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Charles W. Forsberg, David M. Carpenter, Dennis G. Whyte, Raluca Scarlat, Liu Wei
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 4 | May 2017 | Pages 584-589
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1289450
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three advanced power systems use liquid salt coolants that generate tritium and thus face common challenges to prevent release of the tritium to the environment. The Fluoride-salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (FHR) uses the same graphite-matrix coated-particle fuel as High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs) and clean fluoride salt coolants. Molten salt reactors (MSRs) dissolve the fuel in a fluoride or chloride salt and release the fission product tritium to the salt. High-magnetic-field fusion machines may use liquid salt cooling and blankets because of the very high power densities of this new class of fusion machine. The three technologies can be coupled to a Nuclear Air-Brayton Combined Cycle (NACC) enabling variable electricity with base-load reactor operation.
Converging requirements for tritium control in 700°C liquid salts are leading to cooperative programs across technologies; tritium models that combined generation, chemistry, metal corrosion and transport; and new tritium control technologies using advanced carbon forms, metals produced by additive manufacturing and other technologies.