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
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Mar 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Oliviero Barana, Adriano Luchetta, Cesare Taliercio
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 972-976
Plasma Engineering | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9036
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The current RFX-mod machine control system relies upon proprietary products for control (PLCs) and supervision (SCADA). To improve the software versatility and to overcome increasing difficulties with legacy products, a major overhaul is being implemented. The new architecture retains the modularity of the current one, but Javais used to program most of the control tasks and the graphical user interfaces, moving the control functions to a new PC-based layer. The physical layer of the communication employs Industrial Ethernet technology for the local area network; data exchange is based on TCP/IP and OPC communication protocols, and on MDS plus technology. The master scheduler talks to non-PLC subsystems using TCP/IP and exchanges data with the tasks on the PLCs through the MDS plus transport layer and OPC. One Windows PC hosts the OPC and MDS plus servers; other PCs execute the control functions and provide the graphical user interface.This paper describes and analyses the current architecture of the RFX-mod machine control system and the renewed one, which is under development. The first encouraging tests, concerning mainly the communication performance, are reported.