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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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!
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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Stefano Terlizzi, Dan Kotlyar
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 4 | April 2020 | Pages 280-296
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1698239
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo (MC) codes are widely used for the accurate modeling of nuclear reactors. However, efficient inclusion of thermal-hydraulic (TH) feedback within the MC calculation sequence is still an open problem. The issue is emphasized when coupled MC-TH calculations are needed to model the burnup evolution using multiple depletion steps. Among the techniques proposed to solve this problem is the utilization of stabilized Picard iteration in conjunction with a low-order prediction step. The latter is composed of a prediction block for cross sections and a fast deterministic solver that uses the cross sections to obtain a prediction of the power profile. The predicted power is then used as an improved guess for the next MC calculation, therefore leading to faster convergence for the overall algorithm. In this paper, we propose a new prediction block in which one-group cross sections are calculated through convolution of the TH scalar fields with MC-generated generalized transfer functions (GTFs). First-order perturbation theory is then utilized to calculate the power profile from the updated cross sections. A version of this prediction block using a simple fast Fourier transform–based approximation of the GTF is tested against a boiling water reactor unit-cell with realistic density profile and axial reflectors. The analysis was limited to the feedback between neutronics and coolant density variation. Good agreement was observed for both the spatial power and the one-group macroscopic cross-section profiles, which were compared to the reference MC results. This agreement was also preserved near the boundary, where the spatial flux gradients are maximum due to proximity to the axial reflectors.