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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Flavio Dante Giust, Peter Grimm, Rakesh Chawla
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 175 | Number 3 | November 2013 | Pages 292-307
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-69
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Total fission rate measurements have been performed on full-size boiling water reactor fuel assemblies of type SVEA-96 Optima2 in the framework of phase III of the light water reactor (LWR)-PROTEUS experimental program at Paul Scherrer Institute. This paper presents comparisons of calculated, nodal reconstructed, pinwise total fission rate distributions with experimental results. Radial comparisons have been performed for the three axial sections of the assembly (96, 92, and 84 fuel pins), while three-dimensional (3-D) effects have been investigated at pellet level for the two transition regions, i.e., the tips of the short (one-third) and long (two-thirds) partial-length rods. The test zone has been modeled using two different code systems: HELIOS/PRESTO-2 and CASMO-5/SIMULATE-5. The former is presently used for core monitoring and design at the Leibstadt Nuclear Power Plant (KKL). The latter represents the most recent generation of codes constituting the widely applied CASMO/SIMULATE system. For representing the PROTEUS test zone boundaries, partial current ratios - derived from a 3-D Monte Carlo (MCNPX) model of the entire reactor - have been applied to the PRESTO-2 and SIMULATE-5 models in the form of two-group and five-group diagonal albedo matrices, respectively. The MCNPX results have also served as a reference high-order transport solution in the calculation-to-experiment (C/E) comparisons.It is shown that the performance of the nodal methodologies in predicting the global distribution of the total fission rate is very satisfactory. Considering the various radial comparisons, the standard deviations of the C/E distributions do not exceed 1.9% for any of the three methodologies - PRESTO-2, SIMULATE-5, and MCNPX. For the 3-D comparisons at pellet level, the corresponding standard deviations are 2.7%, 2.0%, and 2.1%, respectively.