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
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The deadline arrives: Checking in on the Reactor Pilot Program
On May 23, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the DOE,” which instructed the Department of Energy to create a Reactor Pilot Program (RPP)—a new system in which companies could pursue DOE authorization to build and test their first-of-a-kind nuclear technologies. EO 14301 set an ambitious goal for that program: three reactors achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.
Jie Zheng, Tong Guo, G. Ivan Maldonado
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 137 | Number 2 | February 2001 | Pages 156-172
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2182
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A linear superposition model (LSM) for the speedy and accurate estimation of lattice-physics parameters during within-bundle "pin-by-pin" loading optimization calculations of light water reactor nuclear fuel assemblies has been developed. The LSM has been implemented into the FORMOSA-L code, and typical results show that the run-time requirements can be reduced by at least an order of magnitude relative to performing direct lattice-physics evaluations with the CPM-2 or CASMO-3 code. Moreover, the speedups noted include all overhead expenses associated with the direct lattice-physics calculations required to construct the LSM sensitivity libraries. Additionally, accuracy improvements to the LSM are achieved by inclusion of higher-order cross terms and via quadratic interpolation when perturbing continuous variables. Also, it is shown that the errors generated by this first-order accurate technique can be kept well under control by treating material and spatial shuffles separately during optimizations. The results obtained indicate that the LSM can effectively substitute for direct lattice-physics evaluations throughout the entire optimization process without noticeable loss of fidelity. Finally, both synchronous and asynchronous implementations of parallel computing via the remote-procedure-call approach have been studied to further speed up the creation of LSM sensitivity libraries within FORMOSA-L.