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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
A. Ziya Akcasu, Larry D. Noble
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 25 | Number 1 | May 1966 | Pages 47-57
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A17500
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Solutions of the point kinetic equations with delayed neutrons for reactor systems with arbitrary linear feedback are investigated. It is found that the solutions that are Laplace transformable are bounded for all initial perturbations regardless of whether or not the system is linearly stable, provided the Laplace transform of the feedback kernel has no zeros on the positive real axis. This criterion is applied to some reactor models previously investigated by others. It is shown that there are also nontransformable solutions that possess a finite escape time and that such solutions can exist only if the reactor has a prompt positive reactivity coefficient. The asymptotic behavior of these solutions near the escape time is also obtained. These general conclusions are verified by considering some specific feedback models for which exact solutions are available. Numerical solutions for reactor systems with more realistic feedback models, such as one used to describe EBR-I, are obtained by a digital computer.