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
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Aug 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
August 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
No impact from Savannah River radioactive wasps
The news is abuzz with recent news stories about four radioactive wasp nests found at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The site has been undergoing cleanup operations since the 1990s related to the production of plutonium and tritium for defense purposes during the Cold War. Cleanup activities are expected to continue into the 2060s.
B. M. Rothleder, G. R. Poetschat, W. S. Faught, W. J. Eich
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 100 | Number 4 | December 1988 | Pages 440-450
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A23577
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fuel shuffling problem is posed by the need to reposition partially burned assemblies to achieve minimum X-Y pin power peaks in reload cycles of pressurized water reactors. This problem is a classic artificial intelligence (AI) problem and is highly suitable for AI expert system solution assistance, in contrast to the conventional solution, which ultimately depends solely on trial and error. Such a fuel shuffling assistant would significantly reduce engineering and computer execution time for conventional loading patterns and, much more importantly, even more significantly for lowleakage loading patterns. A successful hardware /software demonstrator has been introduced, paving the way for development of a broadly applicable expert system program. Such a program, upon incorporating the recently developed technique of reverse depletion, would provide a directed path for solving the low-leakage problem.