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
Mathematics & Computation
Division members promote the advancement of mathematical and computational methods for solving problems arising in all disciplines encompassed by the Society. They place particular emphasis on numerical techniques for efficient computer applications to aid in the dissemination, integration, and proper use of computer codes, including preparation of computational benchmark and development of standards for computing practices, and to encourage the development on new computer codes and broaden their use.
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
Mar 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Jesse M. Brown, R. C. Block, A. Youmans, H. Choun, A. Ney, E. Blain, D. P. Barry, M. J. Rapp, Y. Danon
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 3 | March 2020 | Pages 221-231
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1688087
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Often discrepancies can be found in the corresponding cross sections of different evaluated nuclear data libraries. Traditional integral benchmarks that are used to validate such libraries are sensitive to cross-section values across many different energies. This means an erroneously low cross section at one energy may compensate for an erroneously high cross section at another energy, and the integral benchmark value may still be met. While the evaluated cross section may agree with that single benchmark, it could affect other systems differently. To reduce the potential for this error, an energy differential validation method is proposed herein for continuous energy Monte Carlo neutron transport models in the resolved resonance region and the unresolved resonance region (URR). The proposed method exposes the underlying physics of the URR and validates both the average cross section and resonance self-shielding effect driven by the fluctuations in that cross section. This is done by measuring the neutron transmission of a thick sample that, by its nature, exaggerates the resonance self-shielding effect. This validation method is shown to be very sensitive to the cross-section model used (resolved versus unresolved) and the fluctuation correction employed, allowing it to probe the validity of the previously mentioned cross-section evaluations. Tantalum-181 is used as an example to demonstrate the impact of different resonance evaluations. It was found that the JEFF-3.3 and JENDL-4.0u evaluations made reasonable choices for cross-section models of 181Ta; none of the current evaluations, however, can be used to properly model the validation transmission over all energies. It was also found that updating resonance parameters in the URR provided better agreement with the validation transmission.