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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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!
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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.
Brian J. Ade, Benjamin R. Betzler, Joseph R. Burns, Christopher W. Chapman, Jianwei Hu
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 12 | December 2022 | Pages 1539-1558
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2035157
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Recent developments in manufacturing large metal hydrides are enabling their use as a moderator for advanced reactor designs. Yttrium hydride (YHx) is particularly attractive for small reactor designs because of its ability to retain a high hydrogen density at elevated temperatures. Design iteration for the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR), which uses a YH1.85 moderator, revealed positive moderator temperature coefficients. A positive temperature coefficient for YHx is expected regardless of the core design, however, the positive moderator coefficient exceeded that of the negative fuel temperature coefficient in some early TCR design iterations. The cause of the positive moderator coefficient is analyzed, and conditions for which positive temperature coefficients would be expected are identified for a number of fuel and moderator geometry layouts for dense tristructural isotropic/silicon carbide fuel and UO2 fuel.