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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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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Mar 2024
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Jeff A. Halfinger, Michael D. Haggerty
Nuclear Technology | Volume 178 | Number 2 | May 2012 | Pages 164-169
Technical Paper | Small Modular Reactors / Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-65
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Babcock & Wilcox Company launched an aggressive program in 2008 to develop a scalable nuclear reactor using its unique history of over 50 years of continuous reactor engineering and manufacturing. The B&W mPower™ reactor design is a passively safe advanced light water reactor (ALWR) with a below-ground containment structure. This optimized ALWR represents true generation III+ nuclear technology that B&W believes can be certified, manufactured, and operated within today's existing U.S. regulatory, industrial supply chain, and utility operational infrastructure.The mPower reactor takes a competitive approach to plant operations and emphasizes safety and compliance with the EPRI Utilities Requirements Document (URD), incorporating decades of lessons learned from the operating fleet. The design's scalability, ease of transport, and independence from water rights for secondary heat rejection make it well suited for deployment in a wide range of applications, including incremental additions to the base load, load-following conditions, and industrial applications. The mPower reactor is also a viable solution to retrofit aging conventional power plants, leveraging the existing plant siting and transmission system.