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
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
Dec 2025
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2026
Nuclear Technology
December 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
AI at work: Southern Nuclear’s adoption of Copilot agents drives fleet forward
Southern Nuclear is leading the charge in artificial intelligence integration, with employee-developed applications driving efficiencies in maintenance, operations, safety, and performance.
The tools span all roles within the company, with thousands of documented uses throughout the fleet, including improved maintenance efficiency, risk awareness in maintenance activities, and better-informed decision-making. The data-intensive process of preparing for and executing maintenance operations is streamlined by leveraging AI to put the right information at the fingertips for maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, engineers, and technicians.
HENRI B. SMETS
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 11 | Number 4 | December 1961 | Pages 428-433
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE61-A26044
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The stability and instability properties of homogeneous nuclear reactors with a single temperature coefficient of reactivity which is temperature dependent are studied by means of Liapounoff's Second Method. The special case of a temperature coefficient linearly dependent on temperature is solved completely for a space-independent model and it is shown that all solutions are bounded and tend asymptotically to a constant if the reactivity decreases as the temperature approaches large values. In some conditions, the reactor has two stable equilibrium points (bistable).