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
Oct 2025
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
November 2025
Nuclear Technology
October 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The journey of the U.S. fuel cycle
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.
Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.
Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.
L. Cantrel, P. March
Nuclear Technology | Volume 154 | Number 2 | May 2006 | Pages 170-185
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3726
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Iodine is a fission product of major importance in a severe reactor accident because volatile species exist under reactor containment conditions. Radiolytic oxidation of iodide ions is an important source of volatile iodine species. The SISYPHE tests provide an experimental database of prime importance for the study of the mass transfer between the sump and the atmosphere of a containment building under natural convection and in an evaporating flow regime. This phenomenon greatly impacts the airborne iodine concentrations. The two main effects of evaporating conditions are to increase the kinetics of transfer from the liquid to the gaseous phase and to change the steady-state iodine concentrations. The well-known two-film model has been modified to extend to these types of conditions. The agreement between the experimental results and modeling is satisfactory. However, when applied to typical reactor conditions, the impact of this improved modeling on gaseous iodine concentration is not as strong as other phenomena; for example, uncertainties remain concerning organic iodide production mechanisms. Correlations enabling the calculation of individual mass transfer coefficients for the liquid and the gas phases are proposed. The values resulting from these correlations agree well with those obtained from the test interpretations.