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 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
Inertia and LLNL accelerate fuel manufacturing
Inertia Enterprises and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a manufacturing process for the thin layer of cryogenically frozen deuterium-tritium (D-T) used in its target design, reducing production time from days to hours, according to the company.
The advance makes target fueling cheaper and reduces the amount of tritium that Inertia would need to hold at a pilot plant, which lowers material handling costs, regulatory burden, and dependence on scarce fuel inventories.
Shigeki Shiba, Daiki Iwahashi, Tsuyoshi Okawa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 8 | August 2023 | Pages 1154-1163
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2191588
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
From the viewpoint of criticality management in the fuel debris retrieval operation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, it is important in criticality safety analyses to consider the behavior of fuel debris particles as they fall into the water, given that the neutron moderation condition of the fuel debris can dramatically change. In this study, we evaluated a reactivity insertion while fuel debris particles dropped into the water. Specifically, we considered the effects of the fuel debris particle-size distribution in either an erroneous operation or a postulated accident in the fuel debris retrieval operation. Three types of fuel debris particle-size distribution were assumed: monodisperse, uniform, and Rosin-Rammler. The behaviors of the fuel debris particles during sedimentation were evaluated using the coupled Distinct Element Method–Moving Particle Simulation (DEM-MPS) code. The multiplication factors corresponding to the behaviors of the falling fuel debris were calculated by a continuous-energy Monte Carlo code MVP3.0 with JENDL-4.0. Consequently, the multiplication factors changed with the particle motions during the sedimentation, and the trends of the multiplication factors differed between the particle-size distributions. Especially, the 2-cm monodisperse particle-size distribution showed the highest multiplication factor during sedimentation, the trend of which differed from the others in the fuel debris particles dispersing and piled-up phases in the water.