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
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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.
Chae Y. Yang, Nam Z. Cho
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 101 | Number 3 | March 1989 | Pages 243-258
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-A23612
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A nonlinear reactor model is developed taking into account several feedback effects, such as moderator and fuel temperatures, xenon absorption, and soluble boron concentration, through energy balance relations in the core. The resulting equation belongs to a class of nonlinear boundary value problems, and it is shown through bifurcation theory that there may exist multiple steady-state solutions for a range of parameters that correspond to various design and operating conditions. Solutions are obtained numerically for ranges of the parameters by the arc-length continuation method in combination with Newton’s method. Stability analysis is also applied to each solution to investigate whether the solution is stable or not. When the stable and unstable regions of the steady-state solutions are plotted for a wide range of the parameters, we can choose a range of the reactor design and operating conditions such that the reactor does not encounter unstable situations.