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.
Nicolas Crouzet, Paul J. Turinsky
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 2 | June 1996 | Pages 206-214
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24183
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In solving few-group neutron kinetic equations in multidimensions, one must select time step sizes as a function of time such that the temporal truncation error introduced by the discrete time derivative approximation is limited to ensure the desired fidelity. When using the Euler backward finite difference to approximate the first derivative of the flux—a popular approximation because it ensures numerical stability—the truncation error is know to be O(Δt2) and proportional to the second derivative. By employment of the double-time-step-size technique, modified to reduce the frequency that double-time-step-size solutions are required, an estimate of the second derivative can be obtained, leading to an efficient computational algorithm for determining the near-optimum time-step-size sequence to ensure the desired fidelity.