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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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
Yochan Kim, Jinkyun Park, Mary Presley
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 2787-2799
PSA 2021 Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2118481
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With the development of new digital human-machine interfaces, many discussions in the nuclear industry have focused on the human factors issues that arise from the interfaces. To quantitatively characterize the effects of the interfaces on human reliability, we collected empirical data from a full-scope simulator of the APR1400 nuclear power plant using the Human Reliability Extraction (HuREX) framework. From the numerous variables in the collected data describing the contexts of the performance influencing factors (PIFs), including crew experience, task complexity, and procedure quality, the significant variables were identified by three techniques comprising both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Based on the selected variables, the nominal error probabilities and PIF multipliers were then estimated by logistic regression analysis. This paper interprets the meanings of the estimates and discusses the advantages of the employed variable selection techniques.
