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.
Dingkang Zhang, Farzad Rahnema, Abderrafi M. Ougouag
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 175 | Number 1 | September 2013 | Pages 70-80
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-61
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A local incident flux response expansion transport method is developed to generate transport solutions for coupling to diffusion theory codes regardless of their solution method (e.g., fine mesh, nodal, response based, finite element, etc.) for reactor core calculations in both two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) cylindrical geometries. In this approach, a Monte Carlo method is first used to precompute the local transport solution (i.e., response function library) for each unique transport coarse node, in which diffusion theory is not valid due to strong transport effects. The response function library is then used to iteratively determine the albedo coefficients on the diffusion-transport interfaces, which are then used as the coupling parameters within the diffusion code. This interface coupling technique allows a seamless integration of the transport and diffusion methods. The new method retains the detailed heterogeneity of the transport nodes and naturally constructs any local solution within them by a simple superposition of local responses to all incoming fluxes from the contiguous coarse nodes. A new technique is also developed for coupling to fine-mesh diffusion methods/codes. The local transport method/module is tested in 2-D and 3-D pebble-bed reactor benchmark problems consisting of an inner reflector, an annular fuel region, and a controlled outer reflector. It is found that the results predicted by the transport module agree very well with the reference fluxes calculated directly by MCNP in both benchmark problems.