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.
Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
Meeting Spotlight
2023 ANS Annual Meeting
June 11–14, 2023
Indianapolis, IN|Marriott Indianapolis 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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2023
Jan 2023
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2023
Nuclear Technology
July 2023
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Destruction of Ukrainian dam threatens Zaporizhzhia
A Soviet-era dam downstream from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine collapsed last evening, causing the water level of the Kakhovka Reservoir north of the dam to drop and raising new concerns over the already jeopardized safety of the Russian-occupied nuclear facility, Europe’s largest. The reservoir supplies water for, among other things, Zaporizhzhia’s cooling systems.
Haihua Zhao, Vincent A. Mousseau
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 1 | January 2013 | Pages 184-195
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 14th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-14) / Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15766
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents extended forward sensitivity analysis as a method to improve uncertainty quantification. By including the time step and potentially grid spacing as special sensitivity parameters, the forward sensitivity method is extended as one method to quantify numerical errors. Note that by integrating local truncation errors over the whole system through the forward sensitivity analysis process, the generated time step sensitivity information reflects global numerical errors. Discretization errors can be systematically compared against uncertainties due to other physical parameters. This extension makes the forward sensitivity method a much more powerful tool than other tools of its type to help uncertainty quantification. When the relative sensitivity of the time step to other physical parameters is known, the simulation is allowed to run at optimized time steps without affecting the confidence of the physical parameter sensitivity results. The time step forward sensitivity analysis method can also replace traditional time step convergence studies that are a key part of code verification, with much less computational cost. Two well-defined benchmark problems with manufactured solutions are utilized to demonstrate the method.