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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2024
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Latest Journal Issues
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.
Milos I. Atz, Massimiliano Fratoni
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 677-695
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2146475
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Future utilization of nuclear power may involve fuel cycles that incorporate new reactors and new fuel utilization schemes. In comparing fuel cycles in terms of their waste characteristics, many previous studies have focused on properties intrinsic to the wastes themselves: mass, radioactivity, and/or radiotoxicity. These properties do not directly inform analyses that evaluate waste management strategies, impacts, or risks. For these, information about waste packages and waste loading is critical. This paper reports on research performed to bridge the divide between nuclear fuel cycle and waste management analyses while accommodating the diversity of reactors, processes, and waste forms that could be utilized by advanced fuel cycles. An object-oriented Python code, Nuclear Waste Analysis in Python, was written to connect fuel cycle data with backend process information, thereby generating waste form characteristics and package inventories. The backend process models are informed by literature review and engineering judgment. The package is applied to the fuel cycles considered in the Fuel Cycle Evaluation and Screening (FCES) study and is benchmarked against the FCES study waste management evaluation metric data for mass and radioactivity. Hypothetical waste package inventories are reported for each fuel cycle as functions of spent fuel and high-level waste loading.