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
Mathematics & Computation
Division members promote the advancement of mathematical and computational methods for solving problems arising in all disciplines encompassed by the Society. They place particular emphasis on numerical techniques for efficient computer applications to aid in the dissemination, integration, and proper use of computer codes, including preparation of computational benchmark and development of standards for computing practices, and to encourage the development on new computer codes and broaden their use.
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
Jun 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
July 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Nuclear fuel cycle reimagined: Powering the next frontiers from nuclear waste
In the fall of 2023, a small Zeno Power team accomplished a major feat: they demonstrated the first strontium-90 heat source in decades—and the first-ever by a commercial company.
Zeno Power worked with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to fabricate and validate this Z1 heat source design at the lab’s Radiochemical Processing Laboratory. The Z1 demonstration heralded renewed interest in developing radioisotope power system (RPS) technology. In early 2025, the heat source was disassembled, and the Sr-90 was returned to the U.S. Department of Energy for continued use.
Rowayda Fayez M Abou Alo, Amr Abdelhady, Mohamed K. Shaat
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 5 | May 2024 | Pages 1122-1130
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2227837
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The transfer of nuclear spent fuel from the reactor storage pool to dry storage or for reprocessing or final disposition requires information about its isotopic composition, decay heat, and other thermomechanical properties. The spent nuclear fuel assembly of a typical advanced pressurized water reactor, AP-1000, was characterized using the Monte Carlo MCNPX code and SCALE/ORIGEN code. The simulation of operational history started from the operation of the first fresh core for an average fuel assembly with certain physical isotopic parameters until 25 GWd/tonne U discharge burnup.
The analysis considered the calculations of the radionuclide inventories, activity, neutron emission spectrum, gamma-ray emission spectrum, and decay power after 700 effective full power days and for post different time ranges until a 1 million–year cooling period. The comparison of some results of the two codes showed small differences due to the consideration of the continuous-energy variation for neutrons in the MCNPX code and the discrete energy assumption in the SCALE/ORIGEN code.
