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
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Shinji Ebara, Yasutaka Harai, Takehiko Yokomine, Akihiko Shimizu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 148-152
Tritium, Safety, and Environment | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8892
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In solid breeder blanket design of fusion power plants, the ceramic breeder pebble bed plays a very important role. Its mechanical and thermal properties are necessary to design the blanket. In this study, thermomechancal properties of the bed such as effective thermal conductivity and stress-strain relation are investigated by means of numerical simulation. A discrete element manner is adopted in the simulation in order to clarify the influence of the individual particle properties upon the bulk behavior. As a result, the thermo-mechanical properties of pebble bed were well re-created in a computational space by means of the numerical model used in this study.