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 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Leo B. Levitt, Jerome Spanier
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 37 | Number 2 | August 1969 | Pages 278-287
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A20688
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo calculations based on the adjoint transport equation offer an attractive alternative to calculations based on the transport equation when the detector region is much smaller than the source region. However, when an analog simulation of the adjoint equation is attempted, extra variance may arise due essentially to the nonphysical aspects of the adjoint equation. In this paper, a new adjoint Monte Carlo technique is described in which most of this additional variance has been eliminated. The method appears to be very useful for solving slowing down problems involving energies below the threshold for inelastic scattering. The basis for the technique is the idea of exactly reversing direct Monte Carlo random walks. It is shown that this reversal may be accomplished via a transformation of the adjoint transport equation by means of a discontinuous importance function. This transformation is a logical extension to continuous energies of an adjoint multigroup formulation used by Gelbard and Spanier to study thermal problems. Numerical results are provided which illustrate the variance reduction resulting from the use of this technique.