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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.
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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Jeffrey A. Favorite
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 155 | Number 2 | February 2007 | Pages 321-329
Technical Paper | Mathematics and Computation, Supercomputing, Reactor Physics and Nuclear and Biological Applications | doi.org/10.13182/NSE07-A2666
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Standard variational estimates for perturbations in inhomogeneous transport problems were applied to internal-interface perturbations in coupled neutron-photon problems. Absolute gamma-ray line leakages and ratios of line leakages were the quantities of interest. Gamma-ray spectroscopy using the deterministic multigroup discrete-ordinates code PARTISN was accomplished with a 130-group neutron library and a 120-group photon library with narrow bins centered around gamma lines of interest. Perturbed integrals were evaluated using a volume and a surface formulation, and issues involving negative fluxes (required in the adjoint calculation for line ratios) were addressed. Numerical test problems used a 252Cf source surrounded by a material containing nitrogen and hydrogen; the thickness of this material was perturbed ±86%. The ratios of the 1.8848-, 2.2246-, and 5.2692-MeV thermal neutron capture lines were very well estimated using the variational estimates, even for macroscopic-size perturbations of internal interface locations; the volume-integral formulation for the perturbed integrals was generally more accurate than the surface-integral formulation for estimating ratios. For estimating absolute leakages, the Roussopolos functional in the surface-integral formulation was clearly superior when the gamma-producing shell was thickened, but it produced negative estimates when the shell was thinned.