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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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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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.
M. R. Jana, Tapan M. Patel, U. K. Baruah, S. M. Belsare, K. S. Bhope, B. Choksi, N. S. Contractor, S. S. Khirwadkar, M. Mehta, P. K. Mokaria, N. P. Patel, T. H. Patel, R. Swamy, S. Tripathi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 2 | February 2025 | Pages 179-190
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2366732
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The back plate is an important component of the ion source because of its multiple roles including heat load removal during beam operation. The main components of the back plate are (1) a Type 304L stainless steel (SS304L) magnet positioning plate that holds samarium cobalt permanent magnets required for the confinement of ion source plasma, (2) an oxygen-free electronic copper cooling plate with 35 inner and 8 outer cooling channel grooves (each of which is 4 × 1.8 mm2) that is vacuum brazed with a SS304L magnet positioning plate, and (3) a SS304L magnet cover plate. In this paper, the back plate is successfully fabricated, and a high heat flux experiment is done at the High Heat Flux Test Facility Center with an electron beam power of 200 kW for 458 s. The uniform incident heat flux is 2.5 MW/m2. Demineralized water at 34°C is supplied at the rate of 1 kg/s to the cooling plate at inlet pressure of 8.2 bars to remove the high heat load. The surface temperature of the copper plate is measured by an infrared camera, and three temperature regions are observed. The measured average surface temperature of the cooling plate is ~152°C. The bulk water temperature rise ΔTw is ~39.42°C. The estimated absorbed heat flux is ~2.04 MW/m2, and the heat absorption coefficient is 81.6%. The measured leak rate after the heat flux test is 1.6 × 10−8 mbars∙L/s. These High Heat Flux Test experimental results will be useful to study the thermomechanical performance of the back plate and to understand the effect of increasing the beam pulse length.