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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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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Why should safeguards by design be a global effort?
Jeremy Whitlock
I can’t think of a more exciting time to be working in nuclear, with the diversity of advanced reactor development and increasing global support for nuclear in sustainable energy planning. But we can’t lose sight of the need to plan for efficient international safeguards at the same time.
Global nuclear deployment has been underpinned since 1970 by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), making it a key customer requirement for governments to demonstrate unequivocally that the technology is not being misused for weapons development.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has helped verify this commitment for more than 50 years, but it has never safeguarded many of the advanced reactors (and related fuel cycle processes) being developed today.
Robert Petroski, Benoit Forget, Charles Forsberg
Nuclear Technology | Volume 180 | Number 1 | October 2012 | Pages 28-45
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A14517
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fuel cycle option is evaluated in which fuel bred in breed-and-burn (B&B) reactors is used to start up additional B&B reactors, with the fuel being recycled using limited-separations processes instead of full actinide reprocessing. This fuel cycle aims to minimize processing requirements and proliferation risk while still being able to achieve exponential growth and high uranium utilization. The neutron excess concept is applied to compute the starting fuel requirements of new B&B reactors, allowing fleet doubling times to be estimated. A simple analytic expression for doubling time is derived, which is applied to example B&B reactors using a hypothetical core composition. It is found that larger reactors are able to achieve shorter doubling times because of their smaller starter fuel requirements per unit power. Several variant fuel cycle configurations are examined, and their doubling times are computed.