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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
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Latest News
From South Korea to Belgium: Testing a high-density research reactor fuel
The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has developed a high-density uranium silicide fuel designed to replace high-enriched uranium in research reactors. Recent irradiation tests appear to be successful, KAERI reports, which means the fuel could be commercialized to continue a key global nuclear nonproliferation effort—converting research reactors to run on low-enriched uranium fuel.
Konor Frick, J. Michael Doster, Shannon Bragg-Sitton
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 3 | March 2019 | Pages 415-441
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1491181
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Approximately 19% of the electricity produced in the United States comes from nuclear power plants. Traditionally, nuclear power plants, as well as larger coal-fired plants, operate in a baseload manner at or near steady state for prolonged periods of time. Smaller, more maneuverable plants, such as gas-fired plants, are dispatched to match electricity supply and demand above the capacity of the baseload plants. However, air quality concerns and CO2 emission standards have made the burning of fossil fuels less desirable, despite the current low cost of natural gas. Wind and solar photovoltaic power generation are attractive options due to their lack of carbon footprint and falling capital costs. Yet, these renewable energy sources suffer from inherent intermittency. This inherent intermittency can strain electric grids, forcing carbon-based and nuclear sources of energy to operate in a load-follow mode. For nuclear reactors, load-follow operation can be undesirable due to the associated thermal and mechanical stresses placed on the fuel and other reactor components. Various methods of thermal energy storage (TES) can be coupled to nuclear (or renewable) power sources to help absorb grid variability caused by daily load demand changes and renewable intermittency. Our previous research has shown that coupling a sensible heat TES system to a small modular reactor allows the reactor to run at effectively nominal full power during periods of variable electric demand by bypassing steam to the TES system during periods of excess capacity. In this paper we demonstrate that this stored thermal energy can be recovered, allowing the TES system to act as a peaking unit during periods of high electric demand or used to produce steam for ancillary applications such as desalination. For both applications the reactor is capable of operating continuously at approximately 100% power.