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
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS 2025)
May 4–8, 2025
Huntsville, AL|Huntsville Marriott and the Space & Rocket Center
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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May 2025
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
First concrete marks start of safety-related construction for Hermes test reactor
Kairos Power announced this morning that safety-related nuclear construction has begun at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site where the company is building its Hermes low-power test reactor. Hermes, a scaled demonstration of Kairos Power’s fluoride salt–cooled, high-temperature reactor technology, became the first non–light water reactor to receive a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2023. The company broke ground at the site in July 2024.
Mahsa Farasat, Federico Zagni, Lorenzo Pompignoli, G. A. Pablo Cirrone, Ulrich W. Scherer, Lidia Strigari, Domiziano Mostacci
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 9 | September 2023 | Pages 2317-2326
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2164148
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Argon-41 is an essential gaseous radionuclide that must be monitored in gaseous effluents from nuclear facilities. Therefore, a precise evaluation of 41Ar activity is highly desired. Gamma spectroscopy with a NaI(Tl) scintillation detector coupled with a multichannel analyzer (MCA) is one of the widely used techniques for the identification and activity measurements of radioisotopes. However, the efficiency calibration of these kinds of monitoring systems highly depends on the source-detector geometry, and a large amount of uncertainty may complicate the calibration. This paper presents the evaluation of the full peak efficiency of a 2 × 2-in. NaI(Tl) scintillation detector coupled with a stable MCA for a 41Ar source with 1293.5 keV energy in two different source-detector geometries, duct and Marinelli beaker, using the FLUKA code. A new experimental technique is considered to produce 41Ar in a controlled geometry, like a Marinelli beaker, through neutron irradiation of natural argon inside a cyclotron bunker. The simulation data were compared with the experimental results for Marinelli beaker geometry, and the ratio was evaluated as 0.99 ± 0.07. The ratio was considered a scaling factor for the final efficiency calibration of duct geometry.
