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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.
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
PPPL study points to better fusion plasma control
The combination of two previously known methods for managing plasma conditions can result in enhanced control of plasma in a fusion reactor, according to a simulation performed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Kévin Fröhlicher, Eric Dumonteil, Loïc Thulliez, Julien Taforeau, Mariya Brovchenko
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 3 | March 2024 | Pages 527-544
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2193089
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo criticality simulations are widely used in nuclear safety demonstrations, as they offer an arbitrarily precise estimation of global and local tallies while making very few assumptions. However, since the inception of such numerical approaches, it is well known that bias might affect both the estimation of errors on these tallies and the tallies themselves. In particular, stochastic modeling approaches developed in the past decade have shed light on the prominent role played by spatial correlations through a phenomenon called neutron clustering. This effect is particularly of great significance when simulating loosely coupled systems (i.e., with a high dominance ratio). In order to tackle this problem, this paper proposes to recast the power iteration technique of Monte Carlo criticality codes into a variance reduction technique called Adaptive Multilevel Splitting. The central idea is that iterating over neutron generations can be seen as pushing a subpopulation of neutrons toward a generational detector (instead of a spatial detector as variance reduction techniques usually do). While both approaches allow for neutron population control, the former blindly removes or splits neutrons. In contrast, the latter optimizes the spatial, generational, and spectral attributes of neutrons when they are removed or split through an adjoint flux estimation, hence tempering both generational and spatial correlations. This is illustrated in the present paper with a simple case of a bare slab reactor in the one-speed theory on which the Adaptive Multilevel Splitting was applied and compared to variations of the Monte Carlo power iteration method used in neutron transport. Besides looking at the resulting efficiency of the methods, this work also aims to highlight the main mechanisms of the Adaptive Multilevel Splitting in criticality calculations.