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
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2025
Nuclear Technology
September 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
IAEA again raises global nuclear power projections
Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.
IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.
In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.
N. E. Stauff, L. Buiron, B. Fontaine, G. Rimpault
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 2 | February 2013 | Pages 241-250
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15781
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) remain the favorite candidate in France for a Generation IV (Gen IV) reactor fleet to be deployed within this century. Compared with earlier generations (Phénix, Superphénix, and European fast reactor), Gen IV SFRs require attractive economics together with enhanced safety and nonproliferation criteria. An innovative approach named Mathematical Estimation of Transients for Reactor design Orientation (METRO) has been developed with the objective of taking into account both SFR core economic performance and SFR transient incident behavior at an early stage of the core design process. Loss-of-flow, loss-of-heat-sink, and overpower transients are evaluated. Simplified modeling of transients has been developed and benchmarked against reference calculations with satisfactory results. The METRO approach to assessing the efficiency of design orientations is described in the following and applied to a carbide-fueled reactor core.
