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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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
May 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2025
Nuclear Technology
June 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Chen Fu, Peng Xu, Yonggang Huo, Sufen Li, Xingfu Cai
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 9 | September 2022 | Pages 1114-1124
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2052551
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For the problem of searching radioactive sources in a certain area, a search method combining Tsallis divergence strategy with a particle filtering algorithm is proposed. The method this paper proposes for searching for radioactive sources is carried out by using a mobile platform equipped with a NaI(Tl) scintillator detector. The estimation model of the parameters of the radioactive source is constructed and is based on the inverse square law and the fact that the count values of the NaI(Tl) detector in nuclear decay processes obeys the Poisson distribution. The Tsallis divergence strategy is used as a reward function to control the movement of the platform. The posterior distribution of the parameters of the radioactive source is continuously and iteratively updated by using the particle filtering algorithm. The results of Monte Carlo simulations and practical experiments verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.
