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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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.”
Erik L. Vold, Anil K. Prinja, Farrokh Najmabadi, Robert W. Conn
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 22 | Number 2 | September 1992 | Pages 208-226
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A30104
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A one-group diffusion approximation to neutral transport in a plasma is incorporated in a two-dimensional (θ-r) computational code, EPIC, coupling transport and recycling of the plasma-neutral fluids in a consistent finite discretization scheme. Boundary conditions accommodate particle recycling at the edge-core plasma interface. Neutral particle reflection from the pumping duct characterizes a given pumping system. Marginal validity of the diffusion approximation motivates extensive comparisons of the results with Monte Carlo (DEGAS) transport calculations. In prescribed and in self-consistently computed plasma solutions, the neutral diffusion results are comparable with the Monte Carlo results for radial and poloidal profiles of atomic neutral density over a wide range of limiter and divertor edge plasmas. Steady-state density and temperature contours for the Axially Symmetric Divertor Experiment (ASDEX) diverted tokamak are consistent with previous computations using fixed boundary conditions at the separatrix, but show reduced (20%) recycling attributed to the more realistic neutral atom transport by charge-exchange scattering in the diffusion model. Time-dependent plasma solutions with flux boundary conditions across the separatrix are more consistent with experimental data than results with fixed value boundary conditions at the separatrix. The flux across the separatrix is dominated by recycled particles from the edge plasma. A conclusion is that while the one-group diffusion treatment oversimplifies the physics of neutral transport, it is computationally efficient and adequate in accuracy and therefore well suited for edge plasma and for plasma-neutral recycling studies.