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
May 2026
Latest News
Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
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.