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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver 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!
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
R. W. Conn, F. Kantrowitz, W. F. Vogelsang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | August 1980 | Pages 458-468
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A17693
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For hybrid reactors that would directly enrich light water reactor fuel bundles with 239Pu, the fuel distribution across a bundle can be made to be more uniform than when 233U is produced from thorium. As expected, more fuel is produced from 238U than from 232Th per fusion event, although the fuel production per unit thermal power can be greater in the thorium-uranium cycle. The hybrid can be used to produce fissile fuel at a secure fuel production, reprocessing, and fabrication facility. The high support ratio of the hybrid would then allow 10 to 80 external fission reactors to be supported per secure site, depending on the conversion ratio of the off-site fission reactors. It is found that fuel to be shipped away from a secure site can be rendered resistant to diversion by irradiation to a burnup of 0.4 MWd/t in a low power fission reactor on-site.