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Access anywhere, anytime: Nuclear power, Ice Camp, and Rickover’s enduring standard of excellence
Admiral William Houston
As U.S. Navy submarines surface through Arctic ice during Ice Camp 2026, they demonstrate more than operational proficiency in one of the harshest environments on Earth. They reaffirm a technological truth first proven in August 1958, when the USS Nautilus completed its submerged transit of the North Pole: nuclear power enables access anywhere, anytime.
The Arctic is unforgiving, with vast distances, extreme cold, shifting ice, and no logistical infrastructure. Conventional propulsion is constrained by fuel, air, and endurance. Nuclear propulsion removes those constraints. Only a nuclear-powered submarine can operate anywhere in the world’s oceans, including under the polar ice, undetected and at maximum capability for extended periods. Nuclear power provides sustained high speed and the endurance to reposition across the globe without refueling.
J. B. M. De Haas, J. C. Kuijper
Nuclear Technology | Volume 151 | Number 2 | August 2005 | Pages 192-200
Technical Paper | Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management - Fuel Management of Reactors Other Than Light Water Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3643
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The core physics investigations at the Nuclear Research Consultancy Group in the Netherlands, as part of the activities within the HTR-N project of the European Fifth Framework Program, are focused on the incineration of pure (first- and second-generation) Pu fuels in the reference pebble bed high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR) HTR-MODUL with a continuous reload [MEDUL, (MEhrfach DUrchLauf, multipass)] fueling strategy in which the spherical fuel elements, or pebbles, pass through the core a number of times before being permanently discharged. For pebbles fueled with different loadings of plutonium, the feasibility of a sustained fuel cycle under nominal reactor conditions was investigated by means of the reactivity and temperature coefficients of the reactor. The HTR-MODUL was found to be a very effective reactor to reduce the stockpile of first-generation plutonium. It reduces the amount of plutonium to about one-sixth of the original and reduces the risk of proliferation by denaturing the plutonium vector. For second-generation plutonium the incineration is less favorable, as the amount of plutonium is only halved.