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 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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
Nov 2025
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
December 2025
Nuclear Technology
November 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
The progress so far: An update on the Reactor Pilot Program
It has been about three months since the Department of Energy named 10 companies for its new Reactor Pilot Program, which maps out how the DOE would meet the goal announced by executive order in May of having three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026.
Valerio Mascolino, Alireza Haghighat, Jonathan M. Link
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 11 | November 2025 | Pages 1772-1793
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2471698
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Carbon Hydrogen Anti-Neutrino Detector with a Lithium Enhanced Raghavan optical lattice (CHANDLER) detector is an innovative detector design that is able to detect electron antineutrinos from operating nuclear reactors from their inverse beta decay (IBD) interactions within its lattice. High-energy neutrons from cosmic rays can leave a similar signature. In an effort to determine the quenching factor of CHANDLER to high-energy neutron events, a prototype of the system, the MicroCHANDLER detector, has been deployed at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) to perform experiments using TUNL’s Tandem Van de Graaf accelerator to accelerate deuterium ions to produce high-energy, cosmic-ray–like neutrons in a tritiated-titanium target. The goal of the campaign was to determine the proton quenching factor of the scintillator used in the detector. This paper discusses the Monte Carlo modeling and analysis performed using the MCNP6.1.0 code system. The main goal of the work is to determine the time and space of neutron energy deposition signatures in the detector lattice as a function of the deuterium ion beam energy. In addition, the variation of the response in the presence of a polyethylene shield between the neutron source and the detector is investigated. The findings from this analysis will then be employed to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of CHANDLER by discriminating high-energy neutron- induced events from the IBD events.