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
From Capitol Hill: Nuclear is back, critical for America’s energy future
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy convened its first hearing of the year, “American Energy Dominance: Dawn of the New Nuclear Era,” on January 7, where lawmakers and industry leaders discussed how nuclear energy can help meet surging electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing, and national security needs.
Luis E. Herranz, Claudia López (CIEMAT)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 318-324
Worldwide there has been an enormous interest to fully understand the Fukushima accident unfolding, as a way to gain key insights for prevention of these accidents and mitigation of their consequences. This paper focuses on the CIEMAT’s forensic analysis of the Fukushima Unit 1 (1F1) accident sequence. By identifying the major challenges faced for a consistent interpretation of the data available, a description of the MELCOR 2.2 model built to capture the main accident signatures is presented, with particular emphasis on fission product release and transport. Even though this study should be seen as a work in progress, the results here presented are based on a defendable set of hypotheses and approximations and highlight some interesting observations that might have affected fission product release and transport. Among them are worth mentioning the deposit remobilization during the transient (Cesium), the moderate retention in the suppression pool due to the WW bypass meant by direct leaks between RPV and DW and the potential reentrainment as a result of pool saturation. This being said, it’ll be hard to confirm any of these insights concerning fission products. This work is framed under the BSAF Phase 2 project of the OECD and it has been supported by the Spanish Nuclear Regulatory Body through the CSN-CIEMAT collaboration agreement on Severe Accidents (ACAS).