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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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AI and productivity growth
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
This month’s issue of Nuclear News focuses on supply and demand. The “supply” part of the story highlights nuclear’s continued success in providing electricity to the grid more than 90 percent of the time, while the “demand” part explores the seemingly insatiable appetite of hyperscale data centers for steady, carbon-free energy.
Technically, we are in the second year of our AI epiphany, the collective realization that Big Tech’s energy demands are so large that they cannot be met without a historic build-out of new generation capacity. Yet the enormity of it all still seems hard to grasp.
or the better part of two decades, U.S. electricity demand has been flat. Sure, we’ve seen annual fluctuations that correlate with weather patterns and the overall domestic economic performance, but the gigawatt-hours of electricity America consumed in 2021 are almost identical to our 2007 numbers.
Michael W. Cappiello, William J. Rider, John R. Ireland
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 20 | Number 4 | December 1991 | Pages 648-651
Accelerator/Reactor Waste Transmutation | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A11946913
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two target designs and one blanket design are discussed for the Los Alamos Accelerator Transmutation of Nuclear Waste concept. The blanket design presented includes heavy water moderator and piping systems used to contain fission products and actinide streams for transmutation to stable isotopes. A flowing liquid metal target offers the advantage of direct convection of the high heat generation and the possibility for a windowless design. Experiments will be required to test the target design and determine compatibility of the container material. Pumping and heat-transfer equipment will also require research and development. A solid target made of a combination of tungsten and lead offers the advantage of straightforward engineering design, but will require a window between the accelerator and the target.