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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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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?
Nam Zin Cho, Seungsu Yuk, Han Jong Yoo, Sunghwan Yun
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 175 | Number 3 | November 2013 | Pages 227-238
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-68
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In current practice of nuclear reactor design analysis, the whole-core diffusion nodal method is used in which nodal parameters are provided by a single-assembly lattice physics calculation with the zero net current boundary condition. Thus, the whole-core solution is not transport, because the interassembly transport effect is not incorporated. In this paper, the overlapping local/global iteration framework that removes the limitation of the current method is described. It consists of two-level iterative computations: half-assembly overlapping local problems embedded in a global problem. The local problem can employ heterogeneous fine-group deterministic or continuous-energy stochastic (Monte Carlo) transport methods, while the global problem is a homogenized coarse-group transport-equivalent model based on partial current-based coarse-mesh finite difference methodology. The method is tested on several highly heterogeneous multislab problems and a two-dimensional small core problem, with encouraging results.