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.
S. R. Bierman, B. M. Durst, E. D. Clayton
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 65 | Number 1 | January 1978 | Pages 41-48
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE78-A27124
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
There is a continuing interest in the use of fixed neutron absorbers (poisons) for criticality control, since their use would permit safely handling larger quantities of nuclear materials with reduced probability of criticality. The effectiveness of such absorbers as neutron poisons depends on self-shielding effects, which in turn are determined by the magnitude of the absorption cross sections and their variation with energy, the thickness of material, and the neutron energy spectrum. Criticality experiments were performed to obtain data on the reactivity worths of several thicknesses of the following materials in two different neutron energy spectra: Boral Cadmium Type 304-L stainless steel containing 1.6 wt% boron Type 304-L stainless steel containing 1.1 wt% boron Type 304-L stainless steel Uranium depleted to 0.2 wt% 235U Lead. The measurement data reported are limited to a single region of a given absorber material in each critical assembly. Combinations of absorber materials or multiregions were not investigated; however, material thicknesses were varied from 0 to ∼60 mm. The data are presented as sets of clean, well-defined, poisoned critical assemblies that can be used to check calculational techniques and cross-section data in two different neutron energy spectra. The materials are listed above in the order of their measured relative worth as fixed poisons in either neutron energy spectrum.