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.
Meeting 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
Jun 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
July 2025
Latest News
The U.S. Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
Dan G. Cacuci, Ruixian Fang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 198 | Number 2 | May 2017 | Pages 85-131
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1294429
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For counter-flow mechanical draft cooling towers, the air in the fill can reach the point of saturation before leaving the fill section. The heat and mass transfer to the saturated air by evaporative cooling inside the fill are modeled with some assumptions and with over 50 parameters for boundary conditions, cooling tower geometries, heat and mass transfer correlations, water and air thermal properties, etc. Because of the parameter uncertainties and modeling assumptions, the accuracy and reliability of the cooling tower model need to be evaluated by quantifying the uncertainties associated with the model output. First, sensitivities of the model output with respect to all the model parameters need to be analyzed. Based on the cooling tower model, this work developed adjoint sensitivity models for the saturated case to compute efficiently and exactly the sensitivities of the model responses to all model parameters by applying the general adjoint sensitivity analysis methodology for nonlinear systems. The solution of the adjoint sensitivity models are independently verified. With the sensitivities known, the model parameters can be ranked in their importance for contributing to response uncertainties. The propagation of the uncertainties in the model parameters to the uncertainties in the model outputs can be evaluated. By further applying the predictive modeling for coupled multiphysics systems methodology, the cooling tower model for the saturated case can be improved by reducing the model prediction uncertainties through assimilation of experimental measurements and calibration of model parameters.