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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
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.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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!
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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Peter G. Maginot, Jean C. Ragusa, Jim E. Morel
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 179 | Number 2 | February 2015 | Pages 148-163
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-65
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We examine several mass matrix lumping techniques for the discrete ordinates (SN) particle transport equations spatially discretized with arbitrary order discontinuous finite elements in one-dimensional (1-D) slab geometry. Though positive outflow angular flux is guaranteed with traditional mass matrix lumping for linear solution representations in source-free, purely absorbing 1-D slab geometry, we show that when used with higher-degree polynomial trial spaces, traditional lumping does not yield strictly positive outflows and does not increase the solution accuracy with increase in the polynomial degree of the trial space. As an alternative, we examine quadrature-based lumping strategies, which we term “self-lumping” (SL). Self-lumping creates diagonal mass matrices by using a numerical quadrature restricted to the Lagrange interpolatory points. When choosing equally spaced interpolatory points, SL is achieved through the use of closed Newton-Cotes formulas, resulting in strictly positive outflows for odd degree polynomial trial spaces in 1-D slab geometry. When selecting the interpolatory points to be the abscissas of a Gauss-Legendre or a Lobatto-Gauss-Legendre quadrature, it is possible to obtain solution representations with a strictly positive outflow in source-free pure absorber problems for any degree polynomial trial space in 1-D slab geometry. Furthermore, there is no inherent limit to local truncation error order of accuracy when using interpolatory points that correspond to Gauss-Legendre or Lobatto-Gauss-Legendre quadrature points. A single-cell analysis is performed to investigate outflow positivity and truncation error as a function of the trial space polynomial degree, the choice of interpolatory points, and the numerical integration strategy. We also verify that the single-cell local truncation error analysis translates into the expected global spatial convergence rates in multiple-cell problems.