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 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
T. Albagami, P. Rouxelin, A. Abarca, S. Palmtag, M. Avramova, K. Ivanov
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 1 | March 2026 | Pages S595-S610
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2475415
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The paper aims to provide an update on the development of multi-physics coupling for the Monte Carlo code Serpent with the subchannel thermal-hydraulic solver CTF for multi-physics modeling and simulation of pressurized water reactors in principal and as part of the activities of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD/NEA) Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Watts Bar Unit 1 (WB1) multi-physics, multi-cycle depletion benchmark team in particular. Serpent/CTF are coupled to perform steady-state and cycle depletion exercises of the benchmark. Serpent/CTF is an external coupling based on Picard iteration, and it utilizes the Serpent capabilities to communicate with an external solver via the signal library in Python. Serpent/CTF coupling is tested on a three-dimensional (3D) assembly-level problem at nominal conditions as well as on a full-core problem at nominal conditions with xenon equilibrium and verified against the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) code system. The test cases include Problem 6 from the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors VERA Core Physics Benchmark Progression Problem Specifications and Exercise 2 of the OECD/NEA TVA-WB1 benchmark. The compared integral parameters are keff, critical boron concentration and local distributions of power, fuel temperature, channel liquid temperature, and channel liquid density. The comparative analysis shows good agreement, with a keff difference of −74 pcm, critical boron concentration of −8.86 ppm, mean difference of 0.01 for the corewise normalized pin power, 0.17 K for the channel liquid temperature, and 0.45 kg/m3 for the channel liquid density. Serpent/CTF calculations face difficulties in pin fuel temperature convergence below 1% and in overestimating the pin fuel temperature in a few locations.