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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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!
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Latest News
Retrieval of nuclear waste canisters from a borehole
Borehole disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level waste (HLW) uses off-the-shelf directional drilling technology developed and commercialized by the oil and gas sectors. It is a technology that has been gaining traction in recent years in the nuclear industry. Disposal can be done in one or more boreholes (including an array) drilled into suitable sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic host rocks. Waste is encapsulated in specialized corrosion-resistant canisters, which are placed end to end in disposal sections of relatively small-diameter boreholes that have been cased and fluid-filled. After emplacement, the vertical access hole is plugged and backfilled as an engineered barrier.
Charles W. Forsberg
Nuclear Technology | Volume 166 | Number 1 | April 2009 | Pages 3-10
Technical Paper | Special Issue on Nuclear Hydrogen Production, Control, and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A6962
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The traditionally held belief is that the future of nuclear energy is electricity production. However, another possible future exists: nuclear energy used primarily for the production of hydrogen. The hydrogen, in turn, would be used to meet our demands for transport fuels (including liquid fuels), materials such as steel and fertilizer, and peak-load electricity production. Hydrogen would become the replacement for fossil fuels in these applications that consume more than half the world's energy. Such a future would follow from several factors: (a) concerns about climatic change that limit the use of fossil fuels, (b) the fundamental technological differences between hydrogen and electricity that may preferentially couple different primary energy sources with either hydrogen or electricity, and (c) the potential for other technologies to competitively produce electricity but not hydrogen.Electricity (movement of electrons) is not fundamentally a large-scale centralized technology that requires centralized methods of production, distribution, or use. In contrast, hydrogen (movement of atoms) is intrinsically a large-scale centralized technology. The large-scale centralized characteristics of nuclear energy as a primary energy source, hydrogen production systems, and hydrogen storage systems naturally couple these technologies. This connection suggests that serious consideration be given to hydrogen as the ultimate product of nuclear energy and that nuclear systems be designed explicitly for hydrogen production.