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.
Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Y. Richet, G. Caplin, J. Crevel, D. Ginsbourger, V. Picheny
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 175 | Number 1 | September 2013 | Pages 1-18
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-116
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear criticality safety assessment often requires groupwise Monte Carlo simulations of k-effective in order to check subcriticality of the system of interest. A typical task to be performed by safety assessors is hence to find the worst combination of input parameters of the criticality Monte Carlo code (i.e., leading to maximum reactivity) over the whole operating range. Then, checking subcriticality can be done by solving a maximization problem where the input-output map defined by the Monte Carlo code expectation (or an upper quantile) stands for the objective function or “parametric” model. This straightforward view of criticality parametric calculations complies with recent works in Design of Computer Experiments, an active research field in applied statistics. This framework provides a robust support to enhance and consolidate good practices in criticality safety assessment. Indeed, supplementing the standard “expert-driven” assessment by a suitable optimization algorithm may be helpful to increase the reliability of the whole process and the robustness of its conclusions. Such a new safety practice is intended to rely on both well-suited mathematical tools (compliant optimization algorithms) and computing infrastructure (a flexible grid-computing environment).