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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2025
Nuclear Technology
September 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
Rami Ghorbel, Ahmed Ktari, Nader Haddar
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 6 | August 2022 | Pages 503-511
Rapid Communication | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2051923
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The joining of stainless clad steel plates (SCSPs) by welding processes is relatively difficult due to differences in the chemical compositions and the physical and mechanical properties between both the carbon and the stainless steels comprising the clad material. These welded structures often suffer from several structural integrity problems such as bulging phenomena that can appear after bending tests, in the welded zone, due to the presence of a local hardening zone (LHZ). The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the origin of the LHZ typically produced in the welded joint of SCSPs after the bending operation. Optical micrographs revealed the presence of a typical pearlitic-ferritic structure in the welded zone filled with E7018 metal and a dendritic δ-ferrite structure solidified under a skeletal form in the welded zone filled with ER316L metal. The microstructure of the weld metal transition zone (WMTZ) filled with ER309L metal shows the presence of martensitic laths as well as cellular and columnar structures. In addition, the WMTZ revealed the presence of three types of grain boundaries, which are formed during the gas tungsten arc welding process: solidification sub-grain boundary, solidification grain boundary, and migrated grain boundary. Vickers microhardness measurements performed along the thickness of the welded joint showed that the highest microhardness value (406 HV) was observed at the WMTZ. The significant increase of the microhardness value in this transition zone was attributed to the presence of martensitic laths as well as cellular and columnar structures.