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
Apr 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2026
Nuclear Technology
March 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2026
Latest News
DOE selects first companies for nuclear launch pad
The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy and the National Reactor Innovation Center have announced their first selections for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad: three companies developing microreactors and one developing fuel supply.
The four companies—Deployable Energy, General Matter, NuCube Energy, and Radiant Industries—were selected from the initial pool of Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program applicants, the two precursor programs to the launch pad.
Suresh Garg, Feroz Ahmed, L. S. Kothari
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 63 | Number 4 | August 1977 | Pages 500-504
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27064
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have extended our earlier calculations of steady-state space- and angle-dependent thermalneutron spectra in small beryllium assemblies to assemblies of much greater transverse dimensions and have studied neutron diffusion up to much greater distances from the source plane, with a view toward looking for a discrete mode of decay. We find that in the forward direction, neutron distribution fails to attain equilibrium inside 140-cm-thick assemblies with transverse dimensions of 150 × 150 cm2, whereas in the backward direction, equilibrium is reached even inside an assembly of transverse dimensions of 80 × 80 cm2. We show that in the forward direction, equilibrium is delayed by the presence of a penetrating beam of uncollided sub-Bragg neutrons of the source. Thus, an experimentalist can hardly hope to observe equilibrium in the forward direction. The calculated value of diffusion length is in excellent agreement with the observed as well as the theoretical values obtained by earlier workers.