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
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
Reflections on NOW
Hash Hasemianpresident@ans.org
Last month, I talked about my goal of strengthening ANS’s voice, in part by attending three conferences. I have now checked the first event off that list: the Nuclear Opportunities Workshop.
This year, NOW took another step in outgrowing its “workshop” moniker and transitioning to a full-fledged regional conference and expo. What started only a few years ago as a small gathering in Oak Ridge, Tenn., with roughly 50 attendees has skyrocketed to an event with 1,100 people in attendance in Knoxville.
NOW’s popularity reflected how busy the roughly 350 nuclear companies in Tennessee have been in recent years. There is significant work going on surrounding Gen IV reactor development and deployment, advancements in new nuclear fuels, and defense-related builds like the Uranium Processing Facility.
J. T. Mihalczo, E. D. Blakeman, G. E. Ragan, R. C. Kryter, H. Seino, R. C. Robinson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 94 | Number 3 | June 1991 | Pages 336-360
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A15813
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of subcritical experiments in unreflected annular geometry was performed with an aqueous Pu-U nitrate containing 173 and 262 g/ℓ of plutonium and uranium, respectively. The plutonium contained 91.1 wt% 239Pu, while the depleted uranium contained 0.57 wt% 235U. In these experiments, the height of the solution in the annulus was varied from 17.8 to 84.2 cm. The annulus had an inner diameter of 25.4 cm, an outer diameter of 53.34 cm, and a 0.08-cm-thick wall of Type 304L stainless steel. Measurements using the 252Cf-source-driven neutron noise analysis method were interpreted to obtain the subcritical neutron multiplication factors. The data accumulated in the experiment, which is the first test of this method in annular geometry, are summarized, and the analysis of these data is presented. The results and conclusions of these experiments are as follows: (a) the capability to measure the sub-criticality for a multiplying system of annular geometry to a k as low as 0.70 was demonstrated; (b) the criteria developed in previous experiments for choosing source-detector system configurations for which the data can be interpreted using a modified point kinetics were also satisfactory for this experiment; (c) the measurement times for this geometry were not significantly different from those used for cylindrical geometry and were sufficiently short to allow practical measurements; (d) the reactivities obtained from break frequency noise analysis measurements agreed with those obtained from the ratios of spectral densities within the experimental uncertainties; (e) the applicability of the method and an understanding of the theory of the measurement method for plutonium solution systems were demonstrated; and (f) the calculated neutron multiplication factors agreed with the experimental values of k to within ∼0.03.