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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
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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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
Tomohiko Yamamoto, Atsushi Katoh, Yoshitaka Chikazawa, Hiroyuki Hara
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 12 | December 2020 | Pages 1875-1890
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1726155
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To respond to seismic and other natural hazard events, designers of the Japan Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (JSFR), an advanced loop-type reactor, are planning to adopt a steel-plate reinforced concrete structure reactor building and an advanced seismic isolation system to strengthen this building. The design changes have been initiated by lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (Fukushima I NPP) accident. These enhancements to the design are to ensure that the JSFR structure can withstand external hazards and a severe accident. This evaluation and countermeasure study of external hazards and severe accident response by JSFR are based on the JSFR design before the Fukushima I NPP accident (2010 JSFR design).
The method to evaluate the influence of external hazards on the JSFR design has applied Japanese codes and standards to show that the 2010 JSFR design of the building can withstand external hazards without additional countermeasures. And, for extreme conditions, few countermeasures are needed; however, the countermeasures considered have limited impact on the JSFR design because they do not significantly change the reactor building design.
This paper gives a detailed evaluation of the countermeasures for the external hazards and severe accidents that could impact the JSFR building.
