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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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
Nov 2025
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
December 2025
Nuclear Technology
November 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
A trip abroad
Hash Hashemian president@ans.org
In my August column in Nuclear News, I reflected on the importance of ANS’s annual conferences for bringing together our nuclear community at the national level. In September, after speaking at Tennessee’s Nuclear Opportunities Workshop, I focused my NN column that month on the value of state-level conferences.
Also in September, alongside ANS Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy, I shifted my focus to another key front in nuclear collaboration, the international stage, by attending the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
The timing of the IAEA’s General Conference could not have been better; it took place the same week the U.S. and U.K. kicked off a new wave of transatlantic partnerships in the nuclear sector between both government and industry. This fortuitous overlapping gave us a timely and concrete reminder of international collaboration’s unparalleled benefits.
The General Conference was an expectedly busy event. To cover as much ground as possible, Piercy and I took turns attending either the U.S. delegation meetings with other countries or the General Assembly of the IAEA, where the American Nuclear Society has a seat among other critical nongovernmental organizations.
We listened to presentations by several of the 180 IAEA member states, including, of course, the United States. Aside from ANS, the U.S. presence at the conference included U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, NRC Chair David Wright, and DOE Assistant Secretary of Nuclear Energy Ted Garrish.
U.S. representation was further bolstered by an industry delegation that included 65 participants from 32 companies, many of whom used the opportunity to report progress on their plans for the international expansion of their nuclear fleets. Meetings of that industry delegation were coordinated by the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Aside from the main conference, Piercy and I also attended the embedded meetings of the International Nuclear Society Council. INSC exists to facilitate knowledge-sharing and collaboration between 18 different member nuclear societies from around the world.
The INSC meetings within the General Conference brought together the presidents and senior members of those societies to give presentations and explore new opportunities. I made a presentation on the state of nuclear in North America, covering the latest developments and deployments in the U.S. and Canada.
This presentation emphasized the new nuclear lift in the U.S. that is being heavily supported by the Trump administration. I recapped the four executive orders issued by President Trump in May, the recent momentum at the DOE, and how these changes are capitalizing on a broader groundswell in both industry development and public support.
I also pointed out the success of our neighbor Canada in progressing on the first water-cooled small modular reactor in North America using BWRX-300 technology, which was supplied by an American firm and international partners—a perfect symbol of the value of global nuclear collaboration.
In all, I have now represented ANS at the state, national, and international levels, gaining useful insight into the work that needs to be done at each. From this vantage point, it’s clear to me that the path forward from the country to the globe is to, above all else, keep working together and supporting each other to bring about the next age of nuclear.
Caishan Jiao, Hao Wang, Yaorui Li, Meng Zhang, Yang Gao, Mingjian He
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 12 | December 2022 | Pages 1858-1866
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2081483
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With the rapid development of nuclear power, increasing attention has been paid to the treatment of low-level radioactive wastewater (LLRW). In this study, reverse osmosis (RO) and membrane distillation (MD) are used to treat LLRW containing Ce(III), U(VI), and Co(II). RO was used for the purification of LLRW. MD was used for further concentration of RO concentrate. The effect of the operating parameters, including operating pressure (0.6 to 1.4 MPa), feed pH (7 to 9), feed concentration (2 to 10 mg/L), feed temperature (50°C to 90°C), and feed flow rate (80 to 160 L/h) on the permeate flux and the rejection rate of the RO process and MD process was studied. The results demonstrate that it is very effective to use the RO process to treat LLRW containing Ce(III), U(VI), and Co(II), with the rejection rates of Ce(III), U(VI), and Co(II) higher than 99.97%, 99.98%, and 99.35%, respectively. The operating pressure has a significant effect on the permeate flux in the RO process. The permeate flux increases from 9.84 to 23.03 L/m2·h when the operating pressure increases from 0.6 to 1.4 MPa. The feed pH has an apparent influence on nuclide rejection. At the feed pH = 9, the rejection rates of Ce(III), U(VI), and Co(II) by the RO process can reach 99.99%, 99.99%, and 99.79%, respectively. MD can reject almost all the nuclides in the RO concentrate, with rejection rates consistently higher than 99.98%. Increasing the feed temperature and feed flow rate can result in a significant increase in the permeate flux, but has almost no effect on nuclide rejection in the MD process.
