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 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Two steps forward for U.K. advanced nuclear
This week, two significant announcements have emerged from the United Kingdom’s advanced reactor sector.
On June 14, Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they had signed two trilateral memorandums of cooperation to collaborate on “advanced modular reactor (AMR) technology, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), and the coated particle fuel these reactors will use.”
Separately, on June 16, Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower announced that its Natrium reactor design has been formally submitted for U.K. regulatory review. The company also announced the formation of a new subsidiary, TerraPower UK Ltd.
Mauricio Tano, Pablo Rubiolo (Univ of Grenoble-Alpes), Julien Giraud, Veronique Ghetta (LPSC, CNRS/IN2P3)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 533-542
Inverse problem methods deal with the evaluation of the causal factors that result on a set of measurements or observations. Inverse problems found in nuclear reactors involve non-linear and coupled physical phenomena, making the causation effects complicated to de assessed. Furthermore, the extent of the experimental data collected is limited and this data is subjected to experimental noise. In the following paper, a method for solving inverse problems in nuclear reactors with coupled physical phenomena is developed. In the proposed approach, the inverse problem is solved through the minimization of a performance function. The minimization of this performance function is achieved with a preconditioned gradient descendent method. The generalized gradient of the performance function is obtained using the adjoint of the multiphysics equations of the system. Furthermore, for reducing the sensitivity to noise of the inverse problem, a preconditioner based in a Kalman Filter is developed. As an example, the methodology is applied for solving the inverse problem of finding the heat flux in the wall of a natural convection experiment.