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
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
Leah Spradley, Mark Abkowitz, James H. Clarke
Nuclear Technology | Volume 165 | Number 2 | February 2009 | Pages 209-222
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A4087
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes the development and use of an integrated model to explore the impact of design parameters and operational decisions on storage and transportation aspects of the preclosure activity period for the potential repository at Yucca Mountain (YM), Nevada. The model provides an opportunity to perform analyses of various YM preclosure "scenarios." Storage and transportation aspects of the preclosure system are evaluated with the goal of identifying important design parameters and understanding system interactions, thereby providing a tool to recognize trade-offs and dependencies between storage demands at the waste generation sites and the repository.This application of the model explores changes in assumptions regarding the following parameters: (a) year the transportation, aging, and disposal (TAD) canister becomes available; (b) year that YM opens; (c) thermal limit for emplacement; (d) thermal limit for transportation; and (e) utility strategies for selecting assemblies for dry storage loading.The response variables measured are (a) dry storage containers loaded because of lack of capacity in the spent nuclear fuel pools, (b) TAD canisters that could potentially be loaded before YM opens (assuming utilities begin using the TAD canister as soon as it is commercially available), (c) pools from which shipments to YM originate each year, (d) years aboveground aging is required at YM, and (e) containers in the aging facility at YM each year.Results indicate that allowing utilities to trade allocations, prioritizing the trading based on least remaining capacity in the spent nuclear fuel pools, could reduce dry storage demands at the utility sites, decrease the number of pools making shipments each year, and increase the efficiency of the transportation system. This type of prioritization for allocations can provide these improvements without adversely impacting the required aboveground aging at YM in the case that younger fuel is sent first. Consequently, there may be incentive for utilities to negotiate the trading of allocations if they wish to reduce their expected dry storage demands after shipments commence to YM.
