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
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
Dec 2025
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2026
Nuclear Technology
December 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
AI at work: Southern Nuclear’s adoption of Copilot agents drives fleet forward
Southern Nuclear is leading the charge in artificial intelligence integration, with employee-developed applications driving efficiencies in maintenance, operations, safety, and performance.
The tools span all roles within the company, with thousands of documented uses throughout the fleet, including improved maintenance efficiency, risk awareness in maintenance activities, and better-informed decision-making. The data-intensive process of preparing for and executing maintenance operations is streamlined by leveraging AI to put the right information at the fingertips for maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, engineers, and technicians.
Virginia A. F. Dean
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 145 | Number 1 | September 2003 | Pages 20-38
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE03-16
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) provides a handbook of descriptions, evaluations, and models of experiments with fissionable material. The "International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments" (ICSBEP Handbook) is useful for criticality safety analysts and nuclear-data evaluators for validation of neutron transport codes and nuclear cross-section sets. Each of the four main parts of the ICSBEP document provides valuable information. The four parts are as follows: Part 1, detailed description of the experiment; Part 2, evaluation of experimental data to obtain parameter values that define the model and their uncertainties; Part 3, derivation and concise description of the benchmark model; and Part 4, sample calculation results. The ICSBEP Handbook provides a practical, standardized format for documenting nuclear experiments.Valuable, previously unknown data are often discovered during the evaluation process. Besides these discoveries, many other things have been learned during this first decade of evaluating and providing benchmark models of experiments. The current method is described in order to improve understanding of what is required to evaluate benchmark experiments for validation purposes.