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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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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!
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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.”
Heba Louis, Esmaat Amin, Moustafa Aziz, Ibrahim Bashter
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 170 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 61-65
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-11
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The accelerator-driven system (ADS) is an innovative reactor that is being considered as a dedicated high-level-waste burner in a double-strata fuel cycle. (“Double-strata fuel cycle” means a partitioning and transmutation system for long-lived radioactive nuclides.) The target is the physical and functional interface between the accelerator and the subcritical reactor in the ADS, so it is probably the most innovative component of the ADS. Key parameters of ADS are the number of neutrons emitted per incident proton, the neutron multiplicity (n/p), the mean energy deposited in the target for neutrons produced, the neutron energy spectrum, and the spallation product spatial distribution. This paper focuses on the production of neutrons in the spallation reactions. The neutrons produced in the spallation reactions can be characterized by their energy and spatial distributions and multiplicity. The present calculations have been performed using the Monte Carlo code MCNPX. The Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to investigate the neutron multiplicity as a function of incident proton beam energy, as well as a function of target material and target size. Neutron flux distributions at the target surface are calculated and compared with different target materials and proton energies. A comparison of MCNPX with experimental results is made.