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.
Daisuke Kawasaki, Joonhong Ahn
Nuclear Technology | Volume 163 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 137-146
Technical Paper | High-Level Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3977
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method that utilizes a time-domain random-walk model with residence time distributions (RTDs) for radionuclides in a compartment has been developed and applied to a safety assessment model for geologic disposal of high-level radioactive wastes. By choosing a proper RTD, which can be determined by a detailed model for radionuclide transport in a compartment, the present compartment model can simulate radionuclide transport through a repository region without numerical dispersion due to coarse discretization. The method has been demonstrated and illustrated for the case that the physical transport processes in a compartment and the corresponding RTD are known. For an actual performance assessment for a geologic repository, in which multiple waste packages are placed in an array configuration, it is considered that the repository-scale transport simulation can be greatly modularized and simplified by obtaining an RTD around a single package.