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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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
May 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Strong performances across the board
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Another year, another stellar performance by America’s nuclear plants. We’ve come to expect high capacity factors, and it’s a credit to the men and women of the profession. They’ve made routine something that was unimaginable not so long ago.
The decadal challenge for the nuclear enterprise now is to maintain this high level of operational excellence for the current fleet, while at the same time ushering in a new generation of technologies at scale. It will be a big job—but one that seems more and more likely with each passing day.
Hiroshi Sekimoto, Kouichi Ryu, Yoshikane Yoshimura
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 139 | Number 3 | November 2001 | Pages 306-317
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-01
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The new burnup strategy CANDLE (Constant Axial shape of Neutron flux, nuclide densities and power shape During Life of Energy production) is proposed. With this burnup strategy, distributions of fuel nuclide densities, neutron flux, and power density move with the same constant speed and without any change in their shapes. The excess reactivity is constant during the burnup. Therefore, any control mechanisms for the burnup are not required. Calculation procedures are presented to find these shapes and the speed of the burning region with the neutron multiplication factor of a reactor employing this burnup strategy.To demonstrate the CANDLE burnup strategy, it is applied to a fast reactor with excellent neutron economy. Only the initially built reactor requires some fissile material such as plutonium or enriched uranium for the nuclear ignition region of its core, but only natural uranium or depleted uranium is required for the other region. Succeeding reactors require only natural or depleted uranium since the burning region of the previous reactor can be utilized for the ignition region. The life of a reactor can be made longer by elongating the core height. The drift speed of the burning region for the presented fast reactor design is ~4 cm/yr, which is a preferable value for designing a long-life reactor. The burnup of spent fuel is ~40%. It is equivalent to 40% utilization of natural uranium without reprocessing and enrichment.