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
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
Front-end nuclear fuel supply cooperation: Turning allied interdependence into strategic advantage
The global nuclear revival, which is fueled by unprecedented demand for firm, affordable, dispatchable power for artificial intelligence and data center build-out, energy security imperatives, and climate commitments, has exposed a structural reality of the Western fuel cycle: No single allied nation currently possesses the full suite of front-end capabilities. From mining through conversion, enrichment, fabrication, and the emerging deconversion and metallization steps required for reactor fuels, capability is distributed across Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States (collectively, the “Sapporo Five”), as well as a small group of close partners.
J. B. Yasinsky, L. R. Foulke
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 44 | Number 1 | April 1971 | Pages 72-85
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE71-A18907
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is shown that the use of the standard spatial-differencing method when applied to space-time diffusion problems arising as the materials within a reactor are displaced can result in solutions which display a nonphysical time dependence. This irregular time dependence occurs when the spatial mesh and timestep are such that it takes several time steps for a movable material interface to move between two spatial meshpoints. New spatial difference equations, based on a specified piecewise polynomial flux behavior between meshpoints, are developed for the space-time group diffusion equations. Numerical studies show that these new difference equations eliminate the nonphysical time dependence of the solution for movable material problems. In addition, it is shown that for such problems the solutions resulting from the new difference equations are almost as accurate as solutions obtained using the standard difference equations with a much finer spatial mesh.