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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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!
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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Scott D. Ramsey, Roy A. Axford
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 166 | Number 1 | September 2010 | Pages 48-57
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE09-64
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We implement direct and approximate local sensitivity analysis techniques within the context of stochastic point kinetics neglecting delayed neutrons and external neutron sources. After reviewing the derivation of certain probabilities that the neutron population in a nuclear assembly is exactly zero [probabilities of extinction (POEs)], we consider their dependence on physical data. We subsequently focus on fission number distribution dependence and draw comparisons between two different data sets. As various POEs are dependent upon these data through the solution of a nonlinear ordinary differential equation, local sensitivity analysis provides a useful means through which to assess the effects of data reevaluation. We first conduct this analysis generally (though approximately) using Gâteaux-derivative methodology. Following the generalized developments, exact and approximate results for 235U are presented with a discussion concerning important consequences related to criticality safety.