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
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
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May 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Sam Altman steps down as Oklo board chair
Advanced nuclear company Oklo Inc. has new leadership for its board of directors as billionaire Sam Altman is stepping down from the position he has held since 2015. The move is meant to open new partnership opportunities with OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, and other artificial intelligence companies.
Nathan Nicholas, Bryce Shaffer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 366-372
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1712988
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Over the past decade, Air Squared has been actively developing and improving the highly anticipated 15 m3/h tritium vacuum pump to replace the obsolete industry standard Normetex scroll pump. The all-metal pump features a metal bellows that hermetically seals all tritium gas from any material other than metal. Air Squared has listened to the tritium market’s needs and is currently developing the latest addition to the Air Squared tritium vacuum pump line: the 150 m3/h liquid cooled all-metal (LCAM) scroll vacuum pump. Through numerous hours of testing, Air Squared has demonstrated the advantages of LCAM scroll vacuum pumps. The effect that thermal expansion has on highly toleranced all-metal pumps has been observed and characterized to predict pump performance as well as provide safe operational temperature limits. Performance characteristics of the 15 m3/h pump have been analyzed with different process gases to understand the effects of pumping light gases. Vacuum pumping speed curves have been generated at various interstage pressures to understand the advantages that roughing pump systems have when used in series with all-metal scroll vacuum pumps. This paper presents Air Squared’s 15 m3/h designs and highlights the performance characteristics. The effects that pump temperature, process gas, and fore-vacuum have on all-metal scroll vacuum pumps are explained with empirical data collected over a decade of research. With the knowledge and data collected, Air Squared has a pathway for a new industry standard 15 m3/h and 150 m3/h positive displacement scroll pump for tritium service to support international nuclear fusion and tritium research.