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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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 Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
August 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Taking shape: Fusion energy ecosystems built with public-private partnerships
It’s possible to describe fusion in simple terms: heat and squeeze small atoms to get abundant clean energy. But there’s nothing simple about getting fusion ready for the grid.
Private developers, national lab and university researchers, suppliers, and end users working toward that goal are developing a range of complex technologies to reach fusion temperatures and pressures, confounded by science and technology gaps linked to plasma behavior; materials, diagnostics, and electronics for extreme environments; fuel cycle sustainability; and economics.
Kohta Juraku, Shin-Etsu Sugawara
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 9 | September 2021 | Pages 1423-1441
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1908075
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study sheds new light on nuclear risk governance from a sociological perspective by analyzing cases of post-Fukushima controversies on nuclear safety and nuclear emergency preparedness in Japan. By critically analyzing how the three risk-related concepts and methodologies, namely, probabilistic risk assessment, safety goals, and the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, have been interpreted, implemented, and/or abandoned before and after the Fukushima accident, this study identifies three common features that characterize Japan’s nuclear risk governance: avoiding critical conflicts, proclivity toward automated decision making, and strategic overlooking of “uncomfortable knowledge.” These features all involve ignorance of the dynamic nature of safety where addressing uncertainties, heterogeneous knowledge, and incommensurable values can be key for continuously reviewing the existing edifice of safety. By elucidating why such ignorance persists in Japan despite the post-accidental drastic reform, the authors both articulate the deep-rooted structure that underlies it and reflects the societal and historical context, and eventually conceptualize this ignorance as “structural ignorance” of expertise in nuclear safety controversies and policy processes. The results also provide direction for further research to solve this structural problem.