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.
Division Spotlight
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Justin M. Pounders, Farzad Rahnema
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 176 | Number 3 | March 2014 | Pages 273-291
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-108
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new solution technique is derived for the time-dependent transport equation. This approach extends the steady-state coarse-mesh transport method that is based on global-local decompositions of large (i.e., full-core) neutron transport problems. The new method is based on polynomial expansions of the space, angle, and time variables in a response-based formulation of the transport equation. The local problem (coarse-mesh) solutions, which are entirely decoupled from each other, are characterized by space-, angle-, and time-dependent response functions. These response functions are, in turn, used to couple an arbitrary sequence of local problems to form the solution of a much larger global problem. In the current work, the local problem (response function) computations are performed using the Monte Carlo method, while the global (coupling) problem is solved deterministically. The spatial coupling is performed by orthogonal polynomial expansions of the partial currents on the local problem surfaces, and similarly, the time-dependent response of the system (i.e., the time-varying flux) is computed by convolving the time-dependent surface partial currents and time-dependent volumetric sources against precomputed time-dependent response kernels.