ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
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May 2025
Latest News
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.
Adam G. Nelson, Nicolas Martin, Alisha Kasam-Griffith, Zhiwen Xu, Florent Heidet
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2022 | Pages S63-S70
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2035181
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) is being developed to provide a flexible source of neutrons for the accelerated testing of materials. To support this flexibility, the design must be informed by uncertainty assessment that defensibly provides the needed margin. This paper provides an overview of the VTR Program’s approach to the generation and application of uncertainties in the reactor core design process as it relates to this goal. As the uncertainty assessment is still in progress, this paper not only provides an example of how uncertainty has been factored into the early stages of design but also provides findings from sensitivity studies that will form the basis of future uncertainty work.