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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.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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
NWTRB to hold public meeting on SNF disposal and corrosion
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent federal agency that evaluates the Department of Energy’s efforts to manage and dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, will hold a two-day public meeting May 21–22 to review information on the DOE’s research and development activities related to the disposal of SNF and HLW in crystalline host rocks and on the corrosion of commercial SNF after disposal.
Bin Zhang, Liang Zhang, Cong Liu, Yixue Chen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 189 | Number 2 | February 2018 | Pages 120-134
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1394085
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Angular discretization errors inherent in the discrete ordinates method are a major problem, especially for localized source problems and problems with strongly absorbing media or large-volume void regions, where angular discretization errors would be totally unacceptable. This paper proposes a regional angular adaptive algorithm together with a goal-oriented error estimate to solve the SN equations. Standard angular adaptive refinement techniques are based on estimated local errors. We compare an interpolated angular flux value against a calculated value to generate local errors. The adaptive quadrature sets can be created by subdividing a spherical quadrilateral into four spherical subquadrilaterals that have positive weights and can be locally refined. Techniques for mapping angular fluxes from one quadrature set to another are developed to transfer angular fluxes on the interfaces of different spatial regions. To provide a better detector response, local errors are weighted by the importance of a given angular region toward the computational goal, providing an appropriate goal-oriented angular adaptivity. First collision source methods are employed to improve adjoint flux calculation accuracy. We tested the performance and accuracy of the proposed goal-oriented regional angular adaptive algorithm within the ARES code for a number of benchmark problems and present the results of a one-region test model and the Kobayashi benchmark problems. The reduction of angular number is at least one order of magnitude for adaptive refinement. The benchmarks demonstrate that the proposed goal-oriented adaptive refinement can achieve the same level of accuracy as the SN method, which has significantly higher computation cost. Thus, adaptive refinement is a viable approach for investigating difficult particle radiation transport problems.