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
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
College students help develop waste-measuring device at Hanford
A partnership between Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) and Washington State University has resulted in the development of a device to measure radioactive and chemical tank waste at the Hanford Site. WRPS is the contractor at Hanford for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
K. S. Smith, T. Bahadir, R. Ferrer, D. B. Lancaster, A. J. Machiels
Nuclear Technology | Volume 185 | Number 1 | January 2014 | Pages 39-56
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-31
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pressurized water reactor (PWR) assembly reactivity distributions are inferred from ∼600 in-core flux maps taken during 44 cycles of operation of the Catawba and McGuire nuclear power plants. The reactivity distribution for each flux map is determined by systematically searching for fuel subbatch reactivities that minimize differences between measured and computed 235U fission rates. More than eight million core calculations are used to reduce one million measured signals to a set of ∼2500 experimental fuel reactivities for fuel with up to 55 GWd/T burnup. These measured reactivity changes with depletion can be used to validate computer code systems used for burnup credit. To reduce the effort required to quantify computer code system biases and uncertainties, the measured changes in fuel depletion reactivity have been reduced to a set of experimental PWR lattice benchmarks for the change in reactivity as a function of fuel burnup. Results demonstrate that the uncertainty of hot-full-power (HFP) depletion reactivity of the benchmarks is < 250 pcm up to 55 GWd/T burnup. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's TSUNAMI tools are used to extend HFP results to cold conditions, and reactivity decrement uncertainties increase to ∼600 pcm. These experimental benchmarks provide a basis for quantification of combined nuclide inventory and cross-section uncertainties in computed reactivity decrements. It is demonstrated that flux map data reduction is not sensitive to the analytical tools (CASMO/SIMULATE) employed here, and experimental fuel depletion reactivity decrements and uncertainties are anticipated to be independent of fuel management code system use for the data reduction. For CASMO-based analysis, the HFP reactivity burnup decrement biases are shown to be <250 pcm up to 55 GWd/T burnup, and results show that the historical “Kopp memo” 5% reactivity decrement uncertainty assumption is conservative.