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The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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The busyness of the nuclear fuel supply chain
Ken Petersenpresident@ans.org
With all that is happening in the industry these days, the nuclear fuel supply chain is still a hot topic. The Russian assault in Ukraine continues to upend the “where” and “how” of attaining nuclear fuel—and it has also motivated U.S. legislators to act.
Two years into the Russian war with Ukraine, things are different. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022, authorizing $700 million in funding to support production of high-assay low-enriched uranium in the United States. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy this January issued a $500 million request for proposals to stimulate new HALEU production. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 includes $2.7 billion in funding for new uranium enrichment production. This funding was diverted from the Civil Nuclear Credits program and will only be released if there is a ban on importing Russian uranium into the United States—which could happen by the time this column is published, as legislation that bans Russian uranium has passed the House as of this writing and is headed for the Senate. Also being considered is legislation that would sanction Russian uranium. Alternatively, the Biden-Harris administration may choose to ban Russian uranium without legislation in order to obtain access to the $2.7 billion in funding.
Randal S. Baker
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 141 | Number 1 | May 2002 | Pages 1-12
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE02-A2262
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We describe the development and implementation of a block-based adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm for solving the discrete ordinates neutral particle transport equation. AMR algorithms allow mesh refinement in areas of interest without requiring the extension of this refinement throughout the entire problem geometry, minimizing the number of computational cells required for calculations. The block-based AMR algorithm described here is a hybrid between traditional cell or patch-based approaches and is designed to allow an efficient parallel solution of the transport equation while still reducing the cell count.This paper discusses the data structure implementation and CPU/memory efficiency for our Block AMR method, the equations and procedures used in mapping edge fluxes between blocks of different refinement levels for both diamond and linear discontinuous spatial discretizations, effects of AMR on mesh convergence, and our approach to parallelization. Comparisons between our Block AMR method and a traditional single-level mesh are presented for a sample brachytherapy problem. The Block AMR results are shown to be significantly faster for this problem (on at least a few processors), while still returning an accurate solution.