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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Report: New York state adding 1 GW of nuclear to fleet
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has instructed the state’s public electric utility to add at least 1 gigawatt of new nuclear by building a large-scale nuclear plant or a collection of smaller modular reactors, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Shangzhen Xie, Jiyun Zhao (City Univ of Hong Kong)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 172-181
External reactor vessel cooling (ERVC) is proved as a necessary system in in-vessel retention management in the nuclear power plant to transfer the heat from failed core to outside vessel, in the aim of preserving intact vessel and avoiding severe accidents. To provide advanced safety guarantee for the next generation of nuclear power plant, a greater designed safety margin should be considered and proposed, such as increasing the tolerance of high heat flux by using advanced materials of the vessel, insulated structures between reactor core and the vessel, and superior coolant in ERVC system. As long as the heat flux of the reactor vessel wall emerged from melt-core does not go beyond the maximum limitation?Critical Heat Flux (CHF), the decay heat can be dissipated timely and thus the reactor can be cooled down without releasing radiation products. In this case, increasing critical heat flux by various approaches is deemed essential also attract intensive studies in nuclear systems. In fact, the research of the enhancement of critical heat flux has a long history, with extensive experiments and simulations devoted in the last several decades to seeking for methods to expand thermal margin and it continues to be a promising topic in heat transfer research fields. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of CHF enhancement experiments, focusing on four broad categories of approaches. The first approach considered is amelioration of fluid properties by adding nanoparticles into the base fluid, by which both flow boiling and pool boiling achieve significant improvements in CHF. The second prevailing method recently is surface modifications by various advanced techniques. Third, we review the effect of various modified channel structures on the boiling process. Finally, some creative and notable hybrid techniques are presented. Based on this review of the state-of-the-art in CHF enhancement, future research directions are also proposed.