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
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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.
Van Khanh Hoang, Odmaa Sambuu, Jun Nishiyama, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | January 2022 | Pages 109-120
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.1951063
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The objective of the present study is to show that it is feasible to establish the breed-and-burn (B&B) mode of operation with rotational fuel shuffling in the S-PRISM core based on neutronic and thermal-hydraulic analyses. The results quantified the impact of major core design choices on the criticality of a core that uses sodium as a coolant material and HT9 steel as structural material. The design variables examined include the binary metallic fuel U-Zr with different weight percentages of zirconium as well as different core heights and fuel rod pitch-to-diameter ratios (P/Ds) in the fuel assembly. We found that a core using the binary metallic fuel U-Zr with 2 wt% zirconium, with a core height of 200 cm, a P/D of 1.086, and a core power of 400 MW(thermal), could overcome some major design constraints.
It was also found that with shuffling intervals of 1125 to 1250 days, the core with rotational fuel shuffling was critical in the equilibrium state, and the possible average discharged burnup was from 274.8 to 305.3 GWd/ton HM. Reactor characteristics such as neutron flux and power profile were almost stable during the equilibrium cycle. A steady-state thermal-hydraulic analysis was performed for the hottest channel in the core. It revealed that both the fuel and cladding maximum temperatures were less than the melting point of the fuel and the chemical interaction temperature of the HT-9, respectively. The mixed coolant outlet temperature was somewhat below the temperature usually observed in sodium-cooled fast reactors. Thus, it appears that the S-PRISM can be principally designed to have a B&B core.