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
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
S. Chaudhury, S. A. Ansari, P. K. Mohapatra, D. M. Noronha, J. S. Pillai, Ashutosh Srivastava, I. C. Pius
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 5 | May 2019 | Pages 727-735
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1510699
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Laboratory-scale studies were carried out to develop an analytical methodology for the processing of plutonium-bearing analytical laboratory waste at liter scale using hollow fiber–supported liquid membrane (HFSLM) technique by selective recovery of plutonium from uranium, americium, and other laboratory chemicals. In the first stage, uranium and plutonium were selectively transported from the feed to the receiver phase using 30% tri-n-butyl phosphate/n-dodecane which was used as the carrier in HFSLM. From the thus separated uranium and plutonium mixture, Pu(III) was selectively precipitated as ammonium plutonium(III)-oxalate [NH4Pu(C2O4)2 · 3H2O], leaving most of the uranium in the supernatant solution. A combination of HFSLM method followed by ammonium plutonium–oxalate precipitation is faster, gives lower radiation exposure to working personnel, and generates lesser volume of secondary waste as compared to traditional precipitation/ion-exchange technique. Furthermore, the present methodology signifies its importance in providing a very good yield of Pu recovery (>99%) from waste solution.