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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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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
G7 pledges support for nuclear at Italy meeting
The Group of Seven (G7) recommitted its support for nuclear energy in the countries that opt to use it at a Ministerial Meeting on Climate in Italy last month.
In a statement following the April meeting, the group committed to support multilateral efforts to strengthen the resilience of nuclear supply chains, referencing the goal set by 25 countries during last year’s COP28 climate conference in Dubai to triple global nuclear generating capacity by 2050.
Paul Lartaud, Philippe Humbert, and Josselin Garnier
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 8 | August 2023 | Pages 1928-1951
Technical papers from: PHYSOR 2022 | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2143705
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a fissile material, the inherent multiplicity of neutrons born through induced fissions leads to correlations in their detection statistics. The correlations between neutrons can be used to trace back some characteristics of the fissile material. This technique, known as neutron noise analysis, has applications in nuclear safeguards or waste identification. It provides a nondestructive examination method for an unknown fissile material. This is an example of an inverse problem where the cause is inferred from observations of the consequences.
However, neutron correlation measurements are often noisy because of the stochastic nature of the underlying processes. This makes the resolution of the inverse problem more complex since the measurements are strongly dependent on the material characteristics. A minor change in the material properties can lead to very different outputs. Such an inverse problem is said to be ill posed. For an ill-posed inverse problem, the inverse uncertainty quantification is crucial. Indeed, seemingly low noise in the data can lead to strong uncertainties in the estimation of the material properties. Moreover, the analytical framework commonly used to describe neutron correlations relies on strong physical assumptions, and is thus inherently biased.
This paper addresses dual goals. First, surrogate models are used to improve neutron correlation predictions and quantify the errors on those predictions. Then the inverse uncertainty quantification is performed to include the impact of measurement error alongside the residual model bias.