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
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Jul 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
August 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
T. Auerbach
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 29 | Number 3 | September 1967 | Pages 317-324
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A17279
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the theory described in this paper, the lattice of a critical or subcritical system is represented by an array of finite cylindrical elements, arbitrarily distributed throughout a cylindrical volume of moderator. The flux in each element is determined from multigroup PN theory, whose asymptotic part in the moderator, i.e., that part of the flux which survives in the moderator at distances of a few mean-free-paths from the element, can readily be identified. The PN-corrected multigroup diffusion equation is solved in the moderator, taking full account of lattice geometry. It is then connected to the asymptotic part of the interior PN solution across each individual element-to-moderator interface. Thus the physical requirement that the angular neutron distribution be continuous across all interfaces is satisfied throughout the lattice. A similar approach is employed to make the distribution continuous across the moderator-to-reflector boundary. The theory yields, as do all heterogeneous theories, a neutron spectrum which changes continuously, both radially and azimuthally, across the lattice. The method is consistent in that it determines fuel characteristics in accordance with this changing spectrum without the need for defining cells or extrapolation lengths.