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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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!
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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.
Y. A. Chao, P. Huang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 103 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 415-419
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE89-A23693
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A superfast, multidimensional, and compact pressurized water reactor nodal code, SUPERNOVA (SPNOVA), which is much faster than conventional nodal codes and is very accurate, has been developed at Westinghouse Electric Corporation. A kinetics version of this code, SPNOVA-K, is now developed for applications to three-dimensional core kinetics analysis. The theory involved in the kinetics generalization of SPNOVA is discussed and the performance of SPNOVA-K is described. SPNOVA-K adopts the stiffness confinement method of time variable discretization. This method can provide a very stable solution against the size of the discrete time step, allowing much larger step sizes to be used.