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
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Mark L. Williams, R. Raharjo
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 126 | Number 1 | May 1997 | Pages 19-34
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE97-2
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new method is developed to determine space-dependent, self-shielded cross sections for resonance nuclides with no overlapping resonances, contained in an arbitrarily shaped absorber body within some general lattice configuration. The theoretical basis for the method is discussed, and analytical expressions are presented for the space-dependent flux spectrum in the vicinity of an isolated resonance and for the space-dependent variation in the shielded resonance integral and multigroup cross section. The shielded cross-section expressions contain space-dependent, “weighted escape probabilities” that correspond to the weighted average of the energy-dependent escape probability over each energy group. The method is implemented in an assembly lattice physics code, and results are compared to those obtained with a highly accurate transport theory calculation that uses pointwise cross-section data. The method gives good agreement for the radial variation in the self-shielded cross section through a boiling water reactor fuel pellet.