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
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
Dec 2025
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2026
Nuclear Technology
December 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
AI at work: Southern Nuclear’s adoption of Copilot agents drives fleet forward
Southern Nuclear is leading the charge in artificial intelligence integration, with employee-developed applications driving efficiencies in maintenance, operations, safety, and performance.
The tools span all roles within the company, with thousands of documented uses throughout the fleet, including improved maintenance efficiency, risk awareness in maintenance activities, and better-informed decision-making. The data-intensive process of preparing for and executing maintenance operations is streamlined by leveraging AI to put the right information at the fingertips for maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, engineers, and technicians.
Hanlin Shu, Liangzhi Cao, Qingming He
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 11 | November 2025 | Pages 2846-2869
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2025.2462376
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Unstructured mesh (UM) is regarded as an attractive alternative to constructive solid geometry (CSG) in Monte Carlo (MC) simulations due to its adaptability to complex geometries and inherent advantages in conducting multiphysics coupling analysis with finite element codes. However, there generally exists a gap between practical solid models and transport-ready geometries due to the omission of background materials such as air and coolant. This necessitates additional effort to create computer-aided design models for background materials and to generate UM representations meeting accuracy requirements. Such limitations can restrict the applicability of MC simulations, particularly when background materials exhibit significant scale variations and narrow slots. Furthermore, the memory requirements and computational costs associated with UM-based MC simulations for large-scale problems may pose feasibility challenges.
To mitigate these issues, this paper presents an intrusive approach to MC simulations within hybrid geometry. In the hybrid geometry, complex solid entities are represented using UM, while background materials or regular-shape geometries are modeled using CSG. This approach allows for arbitrary intersections between these two geometric representations by explicitly processing the topological relationships between CSG and UM objects during geometric initialization and particle tracking.
The hybrid geometry–based particle tracking capability has been implemented in the MC code NECP-MCX. Validation studies were conducted against benchmarks, including the KRUSTY (Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling Technology) component critical configurations and the ATR (Advanced Test Reactor) critical experiment. Numerical results underscore potential challenges encountered by the pure UM approach while demonstrating that hybrid geometry–based MC simulations can achieve results that closely align with experimental measurements in acceptable efficiencies.