ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Baocheng Zhang, Larry Mayhue, Harish Huria, Boyan Ivanov
Nuclear Technology | Volume 183 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 527-534
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A19439
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Advanced cores and fuel assembly designs have been developed to improve operational flexibility and economic performance and to further enhance safety features of nuclear power plants. The simulation of these new designs, along with strong heterogeneous fuel loading, have brought new challenges to the reactor physics methodologies currently employed in the industrial codes for core analyses. Control rod insertion during normal operation is one operational feature in the AP1000® plant of Westinghouse next-generation pressurized water reactor design. This design improves its operational flexibility and efficiency but significantly challenges the conventional reactor physics methods, especially in pin power calculations. The mixture loading of fuel assemblies with significant neutron spectra causes a strong interaction between different fuel assembly types that is not fully captured with the current core design codes. To overcome the weaknesses of the conventional methods, Westinghouse has developed a state-of-the-art three-dimensional (3-D) pin-by-pin calculation methodology (P3C) and successfully implemented it in the Westinghouse core design code ANC. The new methodology has been qualified and licensed for pin power prediction. The 3-D P3C methodology along with its application and validation are discussed in the paper.