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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 15–18, 2026
Phoenix, AZ|Arizona Grand Resort & Spa
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
Fuel loading process begins at Palisades
The Palisades nuclear power plant has drawn closer to restart, as plant staff began the process of loading fuel into the reactor vessel on Sunday morning.
The commencement of fuel loading places the Covert, Mich., facility in Mode 6—or the refueling stage—under the plant’s technical specifications, plant owner and operator Holtec International said in a news release. The Palisades reactor core consists of 204 fuel assemblies that include new fuel and partially used fuel from the plant’s most recent operating cycles. According to Holtec, the fuel loading is being conducted in accordance with plant procedures and technical specifications.
Huan Jia, Haihua Niu, Han-Jie Cai, Chenzhang Yuan, Xunchao Zhang, Yuanshuai Qin, Hongming Xie, Baifan Wang, Peng Zhang, Yuxuan Huang, Tieming Zhu, Tianji Peng, Weilong Chen, Qingwei Chu, Jianqiang Wu, Shenghu Zhang, Xiang Li, Duanyang Jia, Bin Zhang, Yuan He, Hongwei Zhao, Wenlong Zhan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 1 | January 2024 | Pages 64-73
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2164149
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Chinese Accelerator Front end (CAFe) is a demo superconducting proton linac for an accelerator-driven subcritical system (ADS). It includes an electron-cyclotron resonance ion source, a low-energy transport line, a radio-frequency quadrupole, a medium-energy transport line, a superconducting section, a high-energy transport line, and a beam dump. The design energy and current are 20 MeV and 10 mA, with a beam power of 200 kW. The goal of the CAFe is to demonstrate the 10-mA ability of a full superconducting linac, especially in the low-energy region. In previous beam commissioning, the maximum beam power achieved was 34 kW, which was limited by the capacity of the beam dump. Thus, for the high-power beam commissioning of CAFe, a new 200-kW beam dump has been designed and developed. Based on the thermal analysis, a maximum power density of 200 W/cm2 is adopted for the dump. To avoid a high-level residual dose, the material of the dump is aluminum alloy (Al6063). The dump is a conical structure, with water flow in the interlayer. During beam commissioning, the dump withstood 200-kW proton beam power and collected a total charge of 2049 mAh.