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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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
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.
Athena A. Sagadevan, Sunil S. Chirayath
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 3 | March 2022 | Pages 428-436
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1922259
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Until a long-term solution is finalized, interim storage of sufficiently cooled spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies in dry casks is the predominant practice. Since these dry casks can contain approximately 160 kg of reactor-grade plutonium, they require safeguards monitoring. Results of a simulation study conducted on the design development and analysis of a remote monitoring system (RMS) are presented. The goal of the study was to determine the suitability of this RMS to meet the SNF monitoring objectives. MCNP simulations of a dry cask with all its contents and a set of simulations with one or two removed SNF assemblies were performed to test the detection capabilities of the RMS. The removed assemblies were substituted with dummy assemblies to simulate concealment. The studies showed that the RMS design is suitable to monitor and detect the removal of even a single SNF assembly from the cask.