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.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
July 2025
Latest News
The U.S. Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
Antonio Di Buono, Peter R. Green, Barry Lennox (Univ of Manchester), Neil Cockbain (NNL), Xavier Poteau (Sellafield Ltd)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1284-1293
The use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is now widespread, with well-documented deployments across a diverse range of sectors including aerospace, agri-science and consumer electronics. In the nuclear industry there have been successful deployments of WSN technologies for instrumentation and control, however, there are significant challenges that need to be addressed before wireless sensing can be used in some nuclear decommissioning extreme environments. This paper presents a concept design for a wireless sensor network capable of delivering wireless remote sensing and control capability through the reinforced concrete structures used in nuclear processing environments. The paper describes the deployment challenges, and how these are being addressed by the design methodology. These challenges include: difficult to reach areas with limited or no power sources; radiation tolerance of sensors and communication systems and delivery of secure and reliable communication in spaces exhibiting highly variable wireless propagation conditions. Following the description of the design methodology, the paper focuses on recent work to characterise the wireless propagation through the reinforced concrete structures found in many decommissioning environments. Preliminary Radio Frequency (RF) propagation measurements undertaken in two buildings on the Sellafield site are presented. The paper demonstrates how analysis of these results enables potential transmission frequencies to be identified and the power budget of the wireless sensor nodes to be modelled.