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 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The deadline arrives: Checking in on the Reactor Pilot Program
On May 23, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the DOE,” which instructed the Department of Energy to create a Reactor Pilot Program (RPP)—a new system in which companies could pursue DOE authorization to build and test their first-of-a-kind nuclear technologies. EO 14301 set an ambitious goal for that program: three reactors achieving criticality by July 4, 2026.
G. I. Bell, G. E. Hansen, and H. A. Sandmeier
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 28 | Number 3 | June 1967 | Pages 376-383
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-2
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Much theoretical work has been done in the past to represent the angular dependence in the scattering source term of the Boltzmann equation by means of Legendre or other series expansions. However, relatively little work has been done to feed this information into our present-day SN codes. The SN transport codes at LASL allow a representation of anisotropy in the scattering source term by means of multi-table cross-section sets and two formalisms are given here to generate these sets. Both involve the expansion of scattering cross sections in a series of Legendre polynomials, and incorporation of the expansion coefficients in the tables of transfer cross sections. One, called a consistent P approximation, involves a simple truncation of the series; while the other, called an extended transport approximation, includes an attempt to approximate the next higher term in the series. A general expression is derived for the error in the neutron flux due to either approximation. The numerical evaluation of SN cross-section entries for these formalisms has been computerized. Convergence with respect to Number of Tables is numerically investigated for several different neutron-transport problems: a) deep penetration of high-energy neutrons in air; b) critical size of an enriched-uranium bare sphere; c) reflector savings for an enriched-uranium sphere immersed in H2O; and d) fast-reactor core mockup on ANL's ZPR-III. It is concluded from these problems that both approximations converge rapidly with increasing number of tables and that the simple transport approximation gives quite accurate results for a wide range of problems.