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
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
2027 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
October 31–November 4, 2027
Washington, DC|The Westin Washington, DC 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
Nov 2024
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
December 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2024
Latest News
Drones fly in to inspect waste tanks at Savannah River Site
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will soon, for the first time, begin using drones to internally inspect radioactive liquid waste tanks at the department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Inspections were previously done using magnetic wall-crawling robots.
P. Leconte, C. Vaglio-Gaudard, R. Eschbach, M. Antony, J. Di-Salvo, A. Pépino
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 175 | Number 3 | November 2013 | Pages 308-317
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-56
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ALIX experimental program relies on the experimental validation of the spent fuel inventory, by chemical analysis of samples irradiated in a pressurized water reactor (PWR) between five and seven cycles, and also on the experimental validation of the spent fuel reactivity loss with burnup, obtained by pile-oscillation measurements in the MINERVE reactor. These latter experiments provide an overall validation of both the fuel inventory and the nuclear data responsible for the reactivity loss. This program also offers unique experimental data for fuels with a burnup reaching 85 GWd/tonne, as spent fuels in French PWRs have never exceeded 70 GWd/tonne up to now.The analysis of these experiments is done in two steps with the APOLLO2/SHEM-MOC/CEA2005v4 package. In the first step, the fuel inventory of each sample is obtained by assembly calculations. The calculation route consists of the self-shielding of cross sections on the 281-energy-group SHEM mesh, followed by flux calculation by the method of characteristics in a two-dimensional exact heterogeneous geometry of the assembly, and finally a depletion calculation by an iterative resolution of the Bateman equations. In the second step, the fuel inventory is used in the analysis of pile-oscillation experiments in which the reactivity of the ALIX spent fuel samples is compared to the reactivity of fresh fuel samples. The comparison between experiment and calculation shows satisfactory results with the JEFF3.1.1 library, which predicts the reactivity loss within 2% for burnup of ~75 GWd/tonne and within 4% for burnup of ~85 GWd/tonne.
