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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2026
Nuclear Technology
August 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
MIT professor develops method to verify compliance with Outer Space Treaty
Danagoulian
Areg Danagoulian of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is proposing a mechanism for verifying that Earth-orbiting satellites are in compliance with the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons in space. Danagoulian’s “concept and feasibility study,” titled “Verification of the Outer Space Treaty with cosmic protons,” was published recently in the journal Nature.
W. Bennett, R. G. McClarren
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 1 | April 2025 | Pages S808-S817
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2333092
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Verification solutions for uncertainty quantification (UQ) are presented for time-dependent transport problems where , the scattering ratio, is uncertain. The method of polynomial chaos expansions is employed for quick and accurate calculation of the quantities of interest (QoIs), and uncollided solutions are used to treat part of the uncertainty calculation analytically. We find that approximately six moments in the polynomial expansion are required to represent the solutions to these problems accurately. Additionally, the results show that if the uncertainty interval spans c = 1, which means it is uncertain whether the system is multiplying or not, the confidence interval will grow in time. Finally, since the QoI is a strictly increasing function, the percentile values are known and can be used to verify the accuracy of the expansion. These results can be used to test UQ methods for time-dependent transport problems.