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
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
John Avis, Paul Suckling, Nicola Calder, Robert Walsh, Paul Humphreys, Fraser King
Nuclear Technology | Volume 187 | Number 2 | August 2014 | Pages 175-187
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-83
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Deep geologic disposal of radioactive waste is being planned in a number of international programs. Within a deep geologic repository (DGR), gases can be generated by corrosion of metals and degradation of organics. Reactions, and thus gas generation rates, are dependent upon pressures, temperature, and the availability of water or water vapor within the repository. Furthermore, many reactions consume water. Consumption rates and repository state are not known a priori and are in general coupled processes. A numeric model of coupled gas generation and transport has been developed and implemented in the T2GGM code. T2GGM consists of a gas generation model (GGM), which calculates rates of gas generation and water consumption within the DGR due to corrosion and microbial degradation of the waste packages, integrated with the widely used two-phase-flow code TOUGH2, which models the subsequent two-phase transport of the water and gas through the repository and into the DGR shafts and geosphere. T2GGM has been applied to assess gas transport from a proposed low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste DGR and to study the impact of container corrosion in a hypothetical used fuel DGR.