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
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
October 2025
Latest News
Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
Anthony L. Crawford (INL), David Estrada, Kiyo Fujimoto (Boise State Univ)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1530-1537
This paper presents a test platform capable of applying representative in-pile thermal and monotonic, cyclic, and dynamic force loadings which induce target strain into representative in-pile components. The system’s form is that of two concentric linear delta robots and an intermediate vertical furnace. The enabled relative motion between the end effector platforms will result in enhanced performance compared to single delta or nearly any other Cartesian translational system by doubling the speed, quadrupling the workspace, and being able to actively prevent vibrational damage to its mechanical components. The employed force/torque sensors and motors are sized to apply/measure the target ranges, sensitivities, and bandwidths representative of in-pile loadings for objects of interest. The system has been designed to accommodate many in-pile geometries including a conventional (15mm OD x 12mm ID) fuel pin. Collet chucks attached to the force/torque sensors are designed to secure the pin ends as it transgresses through a furnace tube cavity allowing it to be thermally and/or force loaded. Such a configuration allows material characterization and sensor qualification/development to be performed. The system’s current configuration will have the ability to execute a comprehensive thermal and force loaded strain gauge study. Considered strain gauges in this future study will include conventional resistive strain gauges, weldable resistive strain gauges, and printed capacitive based strain gauges. The printed capacitive strain gauges being developed by this effort are of highest interest due to preliminary results indicating that their performance measures are more compatible with in-pile environments than their commercial counterparts. The test platform will be a critical element in validating the performance of the employed nuclear grade inks for aerosol jet printing, the printing and physical characterization of the printed structures, and the evaluation of sensor performance pre and post-irradiation.
