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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
C. Budtz-Jørgensen, H.-H. Knitter
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 79 | Number 4 | December 1981 | Pages 380-392
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE81-A21389
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neutron-induced fission cross section of 240Pu was measured in the neutron energy range from 10 keV to 10 MeV using the 7-MV Van de Graaff and the electron linear accelerator of the Central Bureau for Nuclear Measurements as pulsed neutron sources, which delivered monoenergetic and continuous neutron spectra, respectively. The neutron-induced fission events were detected with a parallel plate ionization chamber that provided a fast and narrow output signal allowing nanosecond timing, but where the time integral of the pulse contained, at the same time, the energy information of the ionizing particle. This detector permitted a high discrimination between alpha particles and fission fragments at an alpha emission rate of some 107 s−1. The fission cross-section data below 400 keV are especially remarkable since they were taken with an energy resolution almost one order of magnitude better than any other published data set. In this region, large structures in the fission cross section due to Class II states in the second well of the double-humped fission barrier were found. The spontaneous fission half-life of 240Pu was measured to be (1.15 ± 0.03)·1011 yr.