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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott 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
May 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Webinar: MC&A and safety in advanced reactors in focus
Towell
Russell
Prasad
The American Nuclear Society’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division recently hosted a webinar on updating material control and accounting (MC&A) and security regulations for the evolving field of advanced reactors.
Moderator Shikha Prasad (CEO, Srijan LLC) was joined by two presenters, John Russell and Lester Towell, who looked at how regulations that were historically developed for traditional light water reactors will apply to the next generation of nuclear technology and what changes need to be made.
Bela Toth, Klaus Mueller, Jon Birchley, Hozumi Wada, Claude Jamond, Klaus Trambauer
Nuclear Technology | Volume 157 | Number 2 | February 2007 | Pages 132-142
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3808
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents the results of pretest calculations of the Phebus fission product release experiment FPT3. The test scenario with the appropriate initial and boundary conditions was provided by the Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire. For the analyses, three severe accident codes were used: ATHLET-CD, ICARE2, and MELCOR. The calculations were focused on the main phenomena occurring in the bundle, such as the thermal behavior, the hydrogen production mainly due to cladding oxidation, the massive degradation of spent fuel and the release of fission products and control rod and structure materials. Using the predefined boundary and initial conditions, relatively small deviations between the code results were obtained, which demonstrates that the dominant processes occurring during a severe accident in the core of pressurized water reactors can be adequately simulated. By applying these codes to a large spectrum of integral tests as well as to plant analyses, one will obtain reliable results on the fuel bundle behavior. However, the spread in the calculated oxidized boron carbide masses indicates that modeling efforts are still necessary in all the codes in this respect.