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
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Take steps on SNF and HLW disposal
Matt Bowen
With a new administration and Congress, it is time once again to ponder what will happen—if anything—on U.S. spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste management policy over the next few years. One element of the forthcoming discussion seems clear: The executive and legislative branches are eager to talk about recycling commercial SNF. Whatever the merits of doing so, it does not obviate the need for one or more facilities for disposal of remaining long-lived radionuclides. For that reason, making progress on U.S. disposal capabilities remains urgent, lest the associated radionuclide inventories simply be left for future generations to deal with.
In March, Rick Perry, who was secretary of energy during President Trump’s first administration, observed that during his tenure at the Department of Energy it became clear to him that any plan to move SNF “required some practical consent of the receiving state and local community.”1
Hashem Akbari, Lawrence M. Grossman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | August 1980 | Pages 400-409
Technical Paper | Reactor Siting | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A17688
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A methodology is developed to optimize the size and the location of power plants supplying given demand centers by minimizing the cost of transmission lines and plant capital costs subject to the physical constraint that the power plants must be located within a predetermined feasible geographical region. The optimization problem falls within a class of mixed integer nonlinear constrained programming for which no general method of solution exists. Optimization is carried out in two steps to separate considerations of integer and continuous variables. A complete set of possible configuration alternatives in terms of the number of power plants is first generated by examining the comers of a polyhedron set defined by the upper and lower bounds on the number of power plants at each location, with the demand satisfied through a predefined directed transmission network. Then, through a constrained nonlinear programming technique, the optimum location for each promising, feasible alternative is calculated. The best alternative, i.e., the one having the minimum total cost, is selected as the optimum solution.
