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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 8–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Energy Secretary to speak at the 2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
In less than two weeks, the American Nuclear Society’s second annual conference of the year, the 2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo, will come to Washington, D.C.
Today, ANS is announcing that Energy Secretary Chris Wright will be joining the list of nuclear leaders slated to speak at the conference.
Click here to register for the meeting, which will take place November 9–12 in Washington, D.C., at the Washington Hilton. Be sure to do so before November 7 to take advantage of priority pricing.
Timothy P. Burke, Brian C. Kiedrowski, William R. Martin
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 188 | Number 2 | November 2017 | Pages 109-139
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1350000
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Kernel density estimators (KDEs) are applied to estimate neutron scalar flux and reaction rate densities in Monte Carlo neutron transport simulations of heterogeneous nuclear reactors in continuous energy. The mean free path (MFP) KDE is introduced in order to handle the issues that arise from estimating the discontinuous reaction rate densities at material interfaces. Results show the MFP KDE is more accurate at estimating reaction rates compared with previous KDE formulations. An approximate MFP (aMFP) KDE is introduced to circumvent several practical issues presented by the MFP KDE. A volume-averaged KDE is derived and used to determine the bias introduced by the aMFP KDE. A KDE is formulated for cylindrical coordinates to better represent the geometry and capture the physics in two-dimensional reactor physics problems. The results indicate that the cylindrical MFP KDE and cylindrical aMFP KDE are accurate tools for capturing reaction rates in heterogeneous reactor physics problems in continuous energy, with local biases of less than 1%.