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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Jun 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
July 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Take steps on SNF and HLW disposal
Matt Bowen
With a new administration and Congress, it is time once again to ponder what will happen—if anything—on U.S. spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste management policy over the next few years. One element of the forthcoming discussion seems clear: The executive and legislative branches are eager to talk about recycling commercial SNF. Whatever the merits of doing so, it does not obviate the need for one or more facilities for disposal of remaining long-lived radionuclides. For that reason, making progress on U.S. disposal capabilities remains urgent, lest the associated radionuclide inventories simply be left for future generations to deal with.
In March, Rick Perry, who was secretary of energy during President Trump’s first administration, observed that during his tenure at the Department of Energy it became clear to him that any plan to move SNF “required some practical consent of the receiving state and local community.”1
M. Zucchetti, L. Candido, Z. Hartwig, R. Po’, S. Segantin, R. Testoni, D. Whyte
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 6 | August 2019 | Pages 423-428
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1613141
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The new Affordable Robust Compact (ARC) fusion reactor, which, compared to larger machines like ITER, aims to achieve its goal of fusion energy in a less expensive and smaller but even more powerful and faster way with new high-field, high-temperature superconducting magnets, has been designed in the United States. The research tokamak aimed at the development of many ARC technologies is called SPARC. Ignitor is the proposed compact high-field tokamak that shares some design concepts with SPARC and ARC and shows the convenience of this tokamak design development line. Neutronics and radiation damage scoping studies have been carried out for both designs. A general-purpose macroscopic model set up by some of the authors in previous studies has been used to estimate the radiation damage on selected machine components for the two cases. Solutions to solve the problem of radiation damage of the toroidal field coil and poloidal field coil materials have been explored.