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
May 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Reimagining nuclear materials for the future of medicine
Nuclear medicine has come a long way since Henri Becquerel first observed the penetrating energy of radioactive materials in 1896. Today, technetium-99m alone is used in more than 40 million diagnostic procedures every year—from cardiovascular imaging and bone scans to cancer detection—making it the undisputed workhorse of nuclear medicine. That single statistic tells you something important: An enormous portion of modern diagnostic medicine rests on a surprisingly narrow foundation, one built around a small number of aging research reactors that were never originally designed for continuous isotope production.
Pradeep Ramuhalli, Surajit Roy, Jangbom Chai
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 182 | Number 2 | February 2016 | Pages 228-242
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE14-127
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes research toward developing prognostics technologies for light water nuclear power reactor components. The focus of this paper is on passive components (those that do not need to change state or move to perform their function), although the technologies are applicable to other classes of components as well. A prototypic failure mechanism (high-cycle fatigue) is used to focus the efforts and provide context for the development effort. A Bayesian framework is proposed for the prognostics of remaining useful life and applied to simulated data sets representing nondestructive measurements of high-cycle fatigue damage. The initial results of the prognostics based on simulated data sets are presented.