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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
March 2025
Nuclear Technology
February 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Why push materials to their breaking point?
Stephen Taller
We push materials to their breaking point for you.
Millions of Americans rely on nuclear energy. It provides 20 percent of electrical power in the United States—24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. To maintain this reliability, every material used in our reactors must work safely and efficiently.
I’m part of a team of world-class scientists, engineers, and technical professionals at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, testing and evaluating materials designed to thrive in one of the most complex environments on Earth. Nuclear reactors experience heavy stress loads, high temperatures, corrosive environments, and intense radiation fields. Combined, these forces can substantially impact the performance of cladding or other structural materials. We want to know where and under what conditions materials may fail to keep a reactor running safely and reliably.
L. M. Reusch, P. Franz, D. J. Den Hartog, J. A. Goetz, M. D. Nornberg, P. VanMeter
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 74 | Number 1 | July-August 2018 | Pages 167-176
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1404340
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Soft–X-ray (SXR) brightness measurements contain information on a number of physics parameters in fusion plasmas; however, it is nearly impossible to extract the information without modeling. A validated forward model is therefore necessary for the accurate interpretation of SXR measurements and will be critical in the burning plasma era, where medium- and high-Z impurities are ever present. The Atomic Data and Analysis Structure (ADAS) database is a powerful interpretive tool that is extensively used to model and predict atomic spectra, level populations, and ionization balance for fusion plasmas. These predictions are in good agreement with experimental measurements. However, continuum radiation in the X-ray range, while also modeled in ADAS, has not been rigorously verified or tested against experimental data. We therefore performed a systematic comparison of ADAS to a simplified model called PFM. PFM only calculates continuum radiation but shows good agreement with experimental data when only continuum radiation is present. ADAS and the simplified model agree to within 1% to 2% indicating that ADAS is calculating continuum radiation correctly. We have also begun a validation of SXR brightness calculations from ADAS. The SXR brightness measurements modeled by ADAS agree well with experimental measurements from an extreme where the signal is dominated by line radiation continuously through another extreme where the signal is dominated by continuum emission. While this validation work is preliminary, it strongly suggests that ADAS accurately models the physics that lead to SXR radiation.