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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott 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!
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Nuclear Technology
June 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Joakim D. Bergroth, Hanna M. K. Koskinen, Jari O. Laarni
Nuclear Technology | Volume 202 | Number 2 | May-June 2018 | Pages 278-289
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1420335
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Advanced technologies (e.g., virtual and augmented reality) may provide new possibilities to facilitate control room (CR) design and evaluation activities. We studied how immersive three-dimensional (3-D) virtual reality environments may augment and advance the evaluation of safety-critical nuclear power plant CR systems. A multiuser functionality enables several operators to be located and to collaborate in the same virtual CR environment at the same time. There is also a realistic representation of emergency operating procedures in the virtual CR. Spatial audio communication through headsets makes the experience even more realistic. The paper addresses both technical and human factors issues associated with the use of immersive 3-D virtual reality environments in CR validation tests, for example, the amount of technical resources required as compared to normal validation in a real-life physical simulator environment, creation of methodologically new testing opportunities, and new opportunities for data registration and analysis. A new framework has been established for estimating the needed fidelity level of the virtual CR for the type of system evaluation at hand.
