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
Jan 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2026
Nuclear Technology
December 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
2025: The year in nuclear
As Nuclear News has done since 2022, we have compiled a review of the nuclear news that filled headlines and sparked conversations in the year just completed. Departing from the chronological format of years past, we open with the most impactful news of 2025: a survey of actions and orders of the Trump administration that are reshaping nuclear research, development, deployment, and commercialization. We then highlight some of the top news in nuclear restarts, new reactor testing programs, the fuel supply chain and broader fuel cycle, and more.
Bethany Burkhardt, Steven Krahn, Timothy Ault, Brandon Chisholm, Steven Lemasters, Kevin Adams (Vanderbilt Univ), Andrew Sowder (EPRI)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 224-230
Many software-enabled nuclear fuel cycle simulation tools (FCSTs) have been developed to support a range of end-users and to answer a range of questions. However, documentation of software-enabled FCST functionalities and capabilities has been limited, and most FCSTs have been designed to address a narrow set of questions such as reactor performance or nuclear fuel characteristics. Given the limited user community and resources, these tools are generally developed without the benefit of best practices from the commercial software engineering field. This paper provides a snapshot of the current population of FCSTs. In all, 16 software-enabled FCSTs were reviewed based on survey input from software developer and end-user communities. The survey instrument was organized by five major software architectural categories: functionality, usability, reliability, performance, and supportability. Because of the limited end-user population and noncommercial nature of software development efforts, the publicly shared results have been anonymized and limited primarily to population-level findings and trends.