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Growth beyond megawatts
Hash Hashemianpresident@ans.org
When talking about growth in the nuclear sector, there can be a somewhat myopic focus on increasing capacity from year to year. Certainly, we all feel a degree of excitement when new projects are announced, and such announcements are undoubtedly a reflection of growth in the field, but it’s important to keep in mind that growth in nuclear has many metrics and takes many forms.
Nuclear growth—beyond megawatts—also takes the form of increasing international engagement. That engagement looks like newcomer countries building their nuclear sectors for the first time. It also looks like countries with established nuclear sectors deepening their connections and collaborations. This is one of the reasons I have been focused throughout my presidency on bringing more international members and organizations into the fold of the American Nuclear Society.
Yannick Peneliau, Jonathan Dufour
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 1 | April 2025 | Pages S355-S367
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2342496
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Dose rate assessment is of utmost importance in fusion reactors because of the maintenance operations that these facilities will require. The standard way to perform this assessment in ITER is use of the Direct 1-Step (D1S) methodology, which consists of performing neutron transport simulation, material activation, and decay photon transport simulation in one step and thus in one simulation only. Usually, implementation of the D1S methodology requires changing the source files in a reference Monte Carlo code. The purpose of the present work is to develop an easy-to-implement method for Monte Carlo codes to help calculate the dose rate in fusion reactors. To do so, the proposal is to act on nuclear data only and not on source files of the simulation codes. This is done by replacing prompt photon production in evaluation files by suitable decay photon production, taking into account radioactive decays of radionuclides and irradiation history. This study was to be applied first on the TRIPOLI-4® Monte Carlo code for the sake of simplicity. TRIPOLI-4 is the reference code for particle transport at CEA. The verification and validation process relies first on a comparison to the reference Rigorous 2-Step (R2S) methodology and then on an experiment, the so-called Frascati Neutron Generator (FNG) dose experiment. The nuclear database to be changed is of the ENDF-6 format, a recurrent format in neutronics studies. The analysis studied both neutron and photon responses to check if the simulation was performing normally in a physical way and to compare the results with references provided by simulations based on the R2S methodology or by the FNG dose experiment. The simulations have proven to be in good agreement with the experimental results.