ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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
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.
Keisuke Kobayashi, Kenji Nishihara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 136 | Number 2 | October 2000 | Pages 272-281
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE00-A2158
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Using an importance function describing the capability of a system for producing fission neutrons, a new definition of the subcriticality is proposed, which has the physical meaning of a multiplication factor in a real subcritical system with external sources. This multiplication factor ks, which expresses the number of fission neutrons produced by a fission neutron in a steady state, is different from the usual criticality factor or the effective multiplication factor keff, since the former is calculated from the inhomogeneous equation with external source, whereas the latter is calculated from the homogeneous criticality equation without external source.