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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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
Direct waste transfer process quickens at Savannah River Site
The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management’s liquid waste contractor at the Savannah River Site this month marked the first direct transfer of decontaminated waste from the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) to the Saltstone Production Facility (SPF). This is a new step in optimizing waste processing, according to the DOE.
M. E. Rising, A. K. Prinja, P. Talou
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 175 | Number 2 | October 2013 | Pages 188-203
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-93
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The polynomial chaos expansion-stochastic collocation method (PCE-SCM) is demonstrated to be a computationally efficient approach for propagating nuclear data uncertainties evaluated for the prompt fission neutron spectra (PFNS) of n + 235U and n + 239Pu fission reactions through two fast neutron critical benchmark experiments. A principal component decomposition of the PFNS covariance matrices yields an efficient representation of the uncertainty in terms of two to four random variables. Both normal and uniform distributions are considered for these random variables, and the random output variables (angular flux and k-eigenvalue) are expressed in terms of Hermite and Legendre chaos expansions, respectively. Tensor product Hermite and Legendre Gauss quadrature sets, respectively, are used to relate the deterministic chaos expansion coefficients to solutions of independent transport k-eigenvalue problems, and the resulting polynomial chaos expansion provides a complete statistical characterization of the uncertainty in the output variables. Direct random sampling of the PFNS followed by repeated solution of the transport problem to create an ensemble of solutions is used to benchmark results obtained from the PCE-SCM implementation. Both direct random sampling and the PCE-SCM implementation yield comparable results where, for the Jezebel and Lady Godiva critical assemblies, the calculated uncertainties in keff resulting from the PFNS propagated uncertainties are found to be of the same order or larger than reported experimental measurement uncertainties, respectively. The PCE-SCM implementation results obtained require orders of magnitude less computational resources compared with the direct random sampling approach.