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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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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Michael Scott McKinley, Farzad Rahnema
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 136 | Number 1 | September 2000 | Pages 15-33
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE00-A2145
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A perturbation method is developed for estimating the change in the solution of a reactive system to any order for a perturbation in the boundary condition in diffusion theory. The method derived gives formalisms for the eigenvalue, normalized flux, and homogenized parameters. Five examples are provided to verify the method as well as analyze the errors associated with it. The first example is very simple and solves the state of the system up to eighth order and gives a simple numerical analysis of a large perturbation. The next example gives an analytical solution up to second order. A two-region example is also given, which is partially numerical and partially analytical. An albedo test example shows that the higher-order terms all appear to be present in the formalism. The final example presents a simplified one-dimensional boiling water reactor core analyzed up to third order numerically. Applications of this method, error propagation, and future work are also discussed.