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
Apr 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
New X-ray imaging for ITER-supporting tokamaks
As researchers continue to seek ways to better understand the plasma inside fusion machines to fully harness fusion energy, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory is leading a project to provide new X-ray imaging systems to two international tokamak projects: WEST, in southern France, and JT-60SA, in Japan—both of which are designed to support the development of ITER.
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.