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
Why should safeguards by design be a global effort?
Jeremy Whitlock
I can’t think of a more exciting time to be working in nuclear, with the diversity of advanced reactor development and increasing global support for nuclear in sustainable energy planning. But we can’t lose sight of the need to plan for efficient international safeguards at the same time.
Global nuclear deployment has been underpinned since 1970 by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), making it a key customer requirement for governments to demonstrate unequivocally that the technology is not being misused for weapons development.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has helped verify this commitment for more than 50 years, but it has never safeguarded many of the advanced reactors (and related fuel cycle processes) being developed today.
A. M. M. Ali, Hanaa H. Abou-Gabal, Nader M. A. Mohamed, Ayah E. Elshahat
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 195 | Number 2 | February 2021 | Pages 203-213
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1799604
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work aimed to develop accelerator-driven systems (ADSs) with a subcritical thorium assembly for fuel breeding and clean energy utilization by using several seed fuels. The ADS reactor core was loaded with three different fuel types, namely, reprocessed fuel, UN, and UO2 (seed fuel) associated separately with ThO2 fuel (blanket) in a heterogeneous approach. The Monte Carlo code MCNPX 2.7.0 has been employed to calculate neutronic parameters such as the effective multiplication coefficient (Keff), the nuclear fuel evolution during the burnup for every case, and the power fraction from seed and blanket fuels. The results indicate that the utilization of thorium (without any contents of 233U at the beginning of cycle) with reprocessed fuel allowed more 233U production than the UN and UO2 cases but with shorter cycle length. Introducing thorium fuel with the UN into the ADS core presented an efficient method to produce thermal power with the longest cycle length approaching 20 years.