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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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
ANS announces 2025 Presidential Citations
One of the privileges of being president of the American Nuclear Society is awarding Presidential Citations to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding effort in some manner for the benefit of ANS or the nuclear community at large. Citations are conferred twice each year, at the Annual and Winter Meetings.
ANS President Lisa Marshall has named this season’s recipients, who will receive recognition at the upcoming Annual Conference in Chicago during the Special Session on Tuesday, June 17.
David Gandy, Craig Stover (EPRI), Hongqing Xu, Vernon Pence (NuScale Power), Steven Lawler, Matthew Cusworth (Nuclear AMRC)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 372-379
Many of the same manufacturing/fabrication technologies that were employed for light water reactors (LWR) plants built 30-50 years ago are also being employed today to build advanced light water reactors (ALWRs). Manufacturing technologies have not changed dramatically for the nuclear industry even though higher quality production processes are available which could be used to significantly reduce overall component manufacturing/fabrication costs. New manufacturing/ fabrication technologies that can accelerate production and reduce costs are vital for the next generation of plants (Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and GEN IV plants) to assure they can be competitive in today’s and tomorrow’s market.
This project has been assembled to demonstrate and test several of these new manufacturing/ fabrication technologies with a goal of producing critical assemblies of a 2/3rds scale SMR reactor pressure vessel (RPV). Through use of technologies including: powder metallurgy-hot isostatic pressing, (PM-HIP), electron beam welding, diode laser cladding, bulk additive manufacturing, advanced machining, and elimination of dissimilar metal welds (DMWs), EPRI, the US Department of Energy, and the UK-based Nuclear-Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (Nuclear-AMRC) (together with a number of other industrial team members) will seek to demonstrate the hypothesis that critical sections of an SMR reactor can be manufactured/fabricated in a timeframe of less than 12 months and at an overall cost savings of >40% (versus today’s technologies). Major components that will be fabricated from PM-HIP include: the lower reactor head, upper reactor head, steam plenum, steam plenum access ports and covers, and upper transition shell.
The project aims to demonstrate and test the impact that each of these technologies would have on future production of SMRs, and explore the relevance of the technologies to the production of ALWRs, SMRs, GEN IV, Ultra-supercritical fossil, and supercritical CO2 plants. The project, if successful, may accelerate deployment of SMRs in both the USA and UK, and ultimately throughout the world for power production.
