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
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Jun 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
July 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Take steps on SNF and HLW disposal
Matt Bowen
With a new administration and Congress, it is time once again to ponder what will happen—if anything—on U.S. spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste management policy over the next few years. One element of the forthcoming discussion seems clear: The executive and legislative branches are eager to talk about recycling commercial SNF. Whatever the merits of doing so, it does not obviate the need for one or more facilities for disposal of remaining long-lived radionuclides. For that reason, making progress on U.S. disposal capabilities remains urgent, lest the associated radionuclide inventories simply be left for future generations to deal with.
In March, Rick Perry, who was secretary of energy during President Trump’s first administration, observed that during his tenure at the Department of Energy it became clear to him that any plan to move SNF “required some practical consent of the receiving state and local community.”1
B.D. Ganapol, G. C. Pomraning
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 1 | May 1996 | Pages 110-120
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24216
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We consider the two-region Milne problem, defined as the steady-state monoenergetic linear transport problem for two adjoining homogeneous source-free half-spaces, with a particle source coming from infinity in one of the half-spaces. We demonstrate that the asymptotic (Case discrete mode) component of the solution for the scalar flux is easily and explicitly written in terms of Chandrasekhar’s H-function for each medium. This asymptotic solution is shown to exhibit a discontinuity in both the scalar flux and current at the interface between the two half-spaces. Numerical benchmark results for the linear extrapolation distance and the discontinuities are given for various combinations of the mean number of secondaries (c) characterizing the two media. Contact is also made with a variational treatment. In particular, the variational formalism is shown to predict the linear extrapolation distance and these asymptotic discontinuities correct to first order in the difference between the values of c characterizing the two half-spaces.