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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Two steps forward for U.K. advanced nuclear
This week, two significant announcements have emerged from the United Kingdom’s advanced reactor sector.
On June 14, Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they had signed two trilateral memorandums of cooperation to collaborate on “advanced modular reactor (AMR) technology, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), and the coated particle fuel these reactors will use.”
Separately, on June 16, Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower announced that its Natrium reactor design has been formally submitted for U.K. regulatory review. The company also announced the formation of a new subsidiary, TerraPower UK Ltd.
Qiuran Wu, Peng Lu, Hua Du, Yu Zheng, Songlin Liu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 3 | April 2023 | Pages 274-283
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2120304
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radiation field analyses of the fusion reactor are vital to machine design and personal/environmental irradiation protection. Owing to the complicated and toroidal symmetry of fusion reactors, these nuclear analyses have been performed based on a sector model with reflecting boundary conditions. However, not all sections of a fusion reactor are symmetrical in the toroidal direction, particularly the neutron flow channels introduced by auxiliary systems from which particles can leak directly from the plasma. Hence, the reflecting boundary conditions cannot accurately describe the particle transport. Consequently, radiation field analyses based on a full-sector model must be performed to verify the results obtained. In this regard, the neutronics model of CFETR has been built in 360 deg. Meanwhile, the development of the automatic geometry conversion platform cosVMPT has enabled an entire 360-deg model of the CFETR to be established. The model contains all primary components and the outer house building. Sixteen upper/lower ports and six equatorial ports are included, in which two of them are slanted for neutral beam injection, whereas the other ports are filled with a shielding block. The on-the-fly (OTF) global variance reduction method is utilized to accelerate neutron/photon coupling transport. The results show that cosVMPT and the OTF method are reliable, and that the obtained neutron/photon flux is asymmetric outside the main machine. The computational results of the 360-deg model are compared with those of the sector model such that the application scope of simplifying the modeling and calculation using the sector model can be further confirmed.