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.
Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Herschel P. Smith, John C. Wagner
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 149 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 23-37
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE05-A2474
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Certain reactor transients cause a reduction in moderator temperature and, hence, increased attenuation of neutrons and decreased response of excore detectors. This decreased detector response is of concern because of the credit assumed for detector-initiated reactor trip to terminate the transient. Explicit modeling of this phenomenon presents the analyst with a difficult problem because of the dense and optically thick neutron absorption media, given the constraint that precise response characteristics must be known in order to account for this phenomenon. The solution in this study was judged to be the use of Monte Carlo techniques coupled with robust variance reduction to accelerate problem convergence. A fresh discussion on the motivation for variance reduction is included, followed by separate accounts of manual and automated applications of variance reduction techniques. Finally, the results of both manual and automated variance reduction techniques are presented and compared.