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
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
Charles O. Slater, Hamilton T. Hunter
Nuclear Technology | Volume 129 | Number 2 | February 2000 | Pages 201-217
Technical Paper | Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3057
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Newly produced multigroup cross-section libraries require detailed testing to ensure that they are suitable for the applications intended. This requires that the libraries be tested against approved experimental benchmarks and/or well-posed calculational benchmarks. Following this tradition, the recently produced fine-group VITAMIN-B6 library and its derivative BUGLE-96 broad-group library have been tested against calculational and experimental benchmarks that are sensitive to neutrons with energies in the moderate-energy range (10.0 to 20.0 MeV). Iron is prominent in each benchmark as it is in many shielding configurations, and iron cross-section data have posed significant problems in many shielding designs. These benchmarks provide stringent tests for the iron cross sections. Calculated results obtained using the new libraries were compared to measured results or results from other calculations. In some cases, results were in good agreement. In other cases, there were significant discrepancies between results due to deficient measurements in a few comparisons and to method or data deficiencies in other comparisons. It is concluded that there is still need for further measurements and evaluations of the iron cross-section data in the energy region below 6.0 MeV. While fluxes in the moderate-energy range and the associated downscatter sources may be calculated adequately, the inadequate low-energy cross sections can lead to rather large discrepancies in integral quantities such as dose or heating.