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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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!
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Latest News
Former NRC commissioners lend support to efforts to eliminate mandatory hearings
A group of nine former nuclear regulatory commissioners sent a letter Wednesday to the current Nuclear Regulatory Commission members lending support to efforts to get rid of mandatory hearings in the licensing process, which should speed up the process by three to six months and save millions of dollars.
Anatoly Bushuev, Alexander Kozhin, Viktor Zubarev, Tatiana Aleeva, Ekaterina Petrova, Anatoly Myrzin, Alexey Syrosev, Genadiy Vlaskin, Timur Ragimov, Valentin Timoshin, Andrey Samoilov
Nuclear Technology | Volume 170 | Number 2 | May 2010 | Pages 353-359
Technical Paper | Human Factors | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9488
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a nondestructive methodology for the determination of mass and isotopic composition of large plutonium samples. The methodology is based on experimental data from measurements of gamma radiation emitted by plutonium samples under assay. Both plutonium mass and plutonium isotopic composition are derived from one experimental gamma spectrum in two energy ranges. Gamma spectrum in the middle-energy range is used for the determination of plutonium isotopic composition from experimental intensities of photo peaks belonging to different plutonium isotopes. Gamma spectrum in the high-energy range contains photo peaks of spontaneous fission products, and these data can be used for the determination of plutonium mass. The calibration curve for dependence of the count rates in photo peaks of spontaneous fission products on effective 240Pu mass was plotted based on experimental data for the enterprise-level reference plutonium samples. When processing experimental data, some corrections were introduced to account for self-absorption of gamma radiation in the plutonium samples and for neutron-induced fission reactions. The correction factors were calculated with the application of Monte Carlo methodology. The final relative errors in the determination of plutonium dioxide mass were within the range of (4 to 10)% (1) for nuclear material containers with different cooling times and different isotopic compositions of plutonium.
