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 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
NN Asks: What hurdles stand in the way of nuclear power’s global expansion?
Jake Jurewicz
Nuclear technology is mature. It provides firm power at scale with minimal externalities and has done so for decades. The core problem isn’t about the technology—it is how the plants are built. Nuclear construction has a well-documented history of cost and schedule overruns. Previous nuclear plants often spent more than twice what was first budgeted, making nuclear among the power technologies with the largest average cost overruns worldwide.
Recent projects illustrate how severe the problem can be. In South Carolina, the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion saw projected costs rise from roughly $10 billion to more than $25 billion before the project was abandoned in 2017, by which time more than $9 billion had already been spent and customers were stuck paying for a site they have yet to benefit from.
Yutuo Wang, Yintao Li, Zhengquan Zhang, Mengqing Xiao, Changwen Chen, Yuanlin Zhou, Shanqiang Wang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 3 | March 2024 | Pages 501-510
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2232646
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear facilities generate large amounts of contaminated stainless steel metallic material during maintenance and decommissioning. As a new radioactive decontamination method, the self-brittle decontamination method has the advantages of fewer secondary contaminants and can be operated remotely mechanically. The addition of a certain amount of corrosive components to the self-brittlement composite decontaminant can achieve the dual function of self-brittlement and corrosion decontamination. The performance of the decontaminant was investigated by single-factor experiments using electrochemical tests, morphological observations, and weight loss tests. The results show that the decontaminant has good self-embrittlement. When the concentration of HCl is 2.50 mol/L, HNO3 is 3.50 mol/L, NaCl is 0.10 mol/L, and FeCl3 is 0.15 mol/L, the decontaminant is formulated to have the best corrosion and decontamination effect on stainless steel. The detergent will produce a uniform corrosion layer on the surface of stainless steel, and the average corrosion depth can reach 8.3268 μm.