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
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
X-energy receives federal tax credit for TRISO fuel facility
Advanced reactor company X-energy has been awarded $148.5 million in tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act for construction of its TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
S. Bourganel, O. Petit, C. M. Diop
Nuclear Technology | Volume 184 | Number 1 | October 2013 | Pages 29-41
Technical Paper | Neutron Transport and Shielding | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A19866
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Électricité de France nuclear park consists of 58 pressurized water nuclear reactors. To ensure their good performance and safety, ex-core neutron shielding studies are regularly performed. For example, neutron flux calculations in ex-core ionization chambers and pressure vessel neutron fluence studies are carried out. In the first case, ex-core ionization chambers are neutron detectors located in the reactor pit, around the reactor vessel. They are dedicated to reactor operation and core protection. In the second case, the calculation of the fast fluence (for energy >1 MeV) in the pressure vessel is used to determine its fracture toughness and integrity. To improve the fluence computations, new efficient parametric methods are under development. For these two problems, Monte Carlo transport codes such as TRIPOLI-4® allow us to perform simulations in realistic complex three-dimensional geometries and to produce reference results.The aim of the present paper is to present together the theoretical background of our approach based on the continuous-energy Green's functions computation and storage to perform both vessel neutron fluence and ex-core chamber responses. The normalized source contribution or importance factor formalism using Green's functions computation is also described, with its associated statistical uncertainty calculation. Application examples to realistic nuclear plant configurations are given.