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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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
Jun 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
July 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Nuclear fuel cycle reimagined: Powering the next frontiers from nuclear waste
In the fall of 2023, a small Zeno Power team accomplished a major feat: they demonstrated the first strontium-90 heat source in decades—and the first-ever by a commercial company.
Zeno Power worked with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to fabricate and validate this Z1 heat source design at the lab’s Radiochemical Processing Laboratory. The Z1 demonstration heralded renewed interest in developing radioisotope power system (RPS) technology. In early 2025, the heat source was disassembled, and the Sr-90 was returned to the U.S. Department of Energy for continued use.
Peter Yarsky, Kevin Coyne, Cynthia Taylor, Chad Oelstrom
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 2 | February 2025 | Pages 358-376
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2326375
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Risk plus Some Attributes (R + SA) is a method that risk informs the prioritization of inspection activities related to new fuel cycle facility construction. The method uses information available in the Integrated Safety Analysis (ISA) summary to compute the risk-informed importance score of each item relied on for safety (IROFS) referenced in the ISA summary. The approach is based on approximating the risk for each accident sequence and then apportioning that risk to IROFSs associated with that sequence. Once the IROFS risk-informed importance score is computed, the importance score can be adjusted to account for other factors besides the risk. These other factors capture attributes of the IROFSs that affect the prioritization they should receive for inspection. An example of an attribute is the complexity of the IROFSs; complex as opposed to simple IROFSs warrant a higher inspection priority. This paper provides a description of the theoretical and mathematical framework of the R + SA methodology.