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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Jin-Yang Li, Long Gu, Hu-Shan Xu, Yong Dai, You-Peng Zhang, Cun-Feng Yao, Rui Yu, Lu Zhang, Sheng Yang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 2 | February 2021 | Pages 270-284
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1757963
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To study the burnup features of accelerator-driven subcritical systems (ADSs), simplified transmutation trajectories are imperative to make the simulation process more effective with acceptable precision. This process has long been considered a challenging task since the construction of simplified burnup chains often need complex judgments and experiences. Additionally, the burnup analysis of ADSs requires more specific burnup chains for some important isotopes with minor actinides (MAs) and long-lived fission products (LLFPs) included. However, some general burnup codes lack these chains or pack some particularly important isotopes into a kind of pseudo nuclide. In this context, a PyNE-based burnup module (PyNE-Burn) has been developed to solve the burnup problem in ADSs, where three types of isotopes have been considered to construct the simplified burnup chains and weight-sorted judgment criteria have been proposed to determine which nuclides should be included. Moreover, the scan-mode-method-based high-order differential expression has been employed to substitute the legacy method in solving the linearized burnup chains. Finally, numerical tests have been carried out to demonstrate that the PyNE-Burn module has acceptable accuracy and can be used in dealing with the burnup problem in ADSs.