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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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!
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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Nuclear Technology | Volume 46 | Number 1 | November 1979 | Pages 82-97
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32381
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A sensitivity analysis system is developed for assessing the economic implications of uncertainties in nuclear data and related computational methods for light water power reactors. Results of the sensitivity analysis indicate directions for worthwhile improvements in data and methods. Benefits from improvements in data and methods are related to reduction of margins provided by designers to ensure meeting reactor and fuel objectives. The sensitivity analysis system relates costs to uncertainties in nuclear data and methods by two sequences of operations broken at the few-group data level. The first determines the sensitivity of reactor fuel cycle cost to uncertainties in few-group microscopic cross sections. Then, for important cases, further analysis relates few-energy-group cell-averaged microscopic cross sections to uncertainties in basic nuclear data and in related computational methods. Sensitivity analyses are carried out using the batch depletion code FASTCELL, the core analysis code FASTCORE, and the reactor cost code COSTR. FASTCELL depletes a cell using methods comparable to industry cell codes except for a few-group treatment of cell flux distribution. FASTCORE is used with the Haling strategy of fixed power sharing among batches in the core. COSTR computes costs using components and techniques as in industry costing codes, except that COSTR uses fixed payment schedules. Sensitivity analyses are carried out for large commercial boiling and pressurized water reactors. Each few-group nuclear parameter is changed, and initial enrichment is also changed so as to keep the end-of-cycle core multiplication factor unchanged, i.e., to preserve cycle time at the demand power. Sensitivities of eqilibrium fuel cycle cost are determined with respect to ∼300 few-group nuclear parameters, both for a normal fuel cycle and for a throwaway fuel cycle. Particularly large dollar implications are found for thermal and resonance range cross sections in fissile and fertile materials. Sensitivities constrained by adjustment of fission neutron yield so as to preserve agreement with zero exposure integral data also are computed.