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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Gary Johnson (Private Consultant)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1102-1113
In January 2007 the World Nuclear Association (WNA) established the Cooperation in Reactor Design Evaluation and Licensing Working Group (CORDEL) with the aim of stimulating a dialogue between the nuclear industry and nuclear regulators on the benefits and means of achieving a worldwide convergence of safety standards for reactor designs. CORDEL is comprised of several technical working groups including the Digital Instrumentation and Control Task Force (DICTF). Soon after CORDEL was established, the DICTF identified safety classification as a topic where a better understanding of the regulatory practices in various countries could improve the nuclear industries’ ability to license new nuclear power plant designs in various countries. One of the issues identified was the need to understand inconsistencies between the safety requirements established by international and national codes and standards. The first step in this effort was to examine the formally defined terminology that the various organizations use to define five key concepts: Defense-in-depth and diversity, Separation, Redundancy, Reliability, and Spurious activation. This paper summarizes the approach and conclusions of this study. We found important inconsistencies both between the terms that various organizations use for the above key concepts and the definitions of the key concepts themselves. We also found, however, that some of the existing definitions encompass the ideas of all of the organizations studied. Therefore, we believe that it is possible to establish common terms and definitions for the five concepts. This work may also represent a prototype methodology for harmonizing terms and definitions used for other key concepts.