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
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.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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
Sep 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Ian Wall—ANS member since 1964
Ian Wall early in his career . . .
I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Imperial College, London, in 1958. Nuclear power was viewed favorably at the time, so I took a 1-year course on the subject. I was then offered fellowships at Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and thought the latter would be more interesting, so I moved to Cambridge, Mass., to study nuclear engineering. After completing my doctorate in 1964, I joined the American Nuclear Society and took a job with General Electric, then in San Jose, Calif.
In 1967, GE assigned me to explore the use of probability in reactor safety. At that time, the prevailing opinion was that the probability of a severe accident was infinitesimally small and the consequences would be catastrophic.
S. Wang, Y. Q. Liu, X. M. Song, G. Y. Zheng, G. L. Xia, L. Li
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 4 | May 2018 | Pages 519-532
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1404416
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Systematic, multiple initial value simulations are performed for a toroidal plasma using the recently updated MARS-F code in order to understand how the resistive wall mode (RWM) can be feedback controlled in the presence of control coil voltage saturation and/or sensor noise. The former renders the control nonlinear, thus generally requiring initial value computations for toroidal plasmas. This numerical study complements and confirms the key results from a previously analytic investigation of the RWM feedback with power saturation for a cylindrical plasma [Li et al., Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 19, 012502 (2012)]. Moreover, simulation results reveal a linear trend between the maximum tolerable sensor noise level and the degree of relaxing the control coil voltage saturation requirement, up to a certain level of noise, corresponding to a noise-to-signal ratio of about 25%. Beyond this level, further relaxing the control voltage saturation limit does not lead to increased sensor noise tolerance for the RWM stabilization.
