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
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Jan 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2026
Nuclear Technology
December 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
From Capitol Hill: Nuclear is back, critical for America’s energy future
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy convened its first hearing of the year, “American Energy Dominance: Dawn of the New Nuclear Era,” on January 7, where lawmakers and industry leaders discussed how nuclear energy can help meet surging electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing, and national security needs.
Christopher L. Leakeas, Edward W. Larsen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 137 | Number 3 | March 2001 | Pages 236-250
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2189
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Fokker-Planck equation is often used to approximate the description of particle transport processes with highly forward-peaked scattering. Pomraning has shown that if the physical scattering kernel is sufficiently dominated by small-angle scattering, then the Fokker-Planck equation is an asymptotic approximation to the linear Boltzmann equation. However, most physically-meaningful scattering kernels contain a sufficient amount of large-angle scattering that the asymptotic criterion is not met. Thus, in many physical problems, solutions of the Fokker-Planck equation are substantially in error. In this paper, Pomraning's asymptotic results are generalized and a new generalized Fokker-Planck (GFP) theory that robustly incorporates large-angle scattering is developed. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the resulting GFP equations are much more accurate than the standard Fokker-Planck equation.