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
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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
Jan 2025
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2025
Nuclear Technology
January 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Westinghouse’s lunar microreactor concept gets a contract for continued R&D
Westinghouse Electric Company announced last week that NASA and the Department of Energy have awarded the company a contract to continue developing a lunar microreactor concept for the Fission Surface Power (FSP) project.
Gokhan Yesilyurt, William R. Martin, Forrest B. Brown
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 171 | Number 3 | July 2012 | Pages 239-257
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-67
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the primary challenges associated with the neutronic analysis of a nuclear reactor is accounting for temperature feedback due to Doppler broadening. This challenge is addressed by a new “on-the-fly” methodology that is applied during the random walk process in Monte Carlo codes with negligible impact on computational efficiency. The Monte Carlo code only needs to store 0 K cross sections for each isotope and the method will broaden the 0 K cross sections for any isotope in the library to any temperature in the range 77 to 3200 K for all incoming neutron energies up to 20 MeV. The methodology is based on a combination of Taylor series expansions and asymptotic series expansions. The type of series representation was determined by investigating the temperature dependence of 238U resonance cross sections in three regions: near the resonance peaks, midresonance, and the resonance wings. The coefficients for these series expansions were determined by a regression over the energy and temperature range of interest. Since the resonance parameters are a function of the neutron energy and the target nuclide, the ψ and χ functions in the Adler-Adler multilevel resonance model can be represented by series expansions in temperature only, allowing the least number of terms to approximate the temperature-dependent cross sections within a specified accuracy. The comparison of the broadened cross sections using this methodology with the NJOY cross sections was excellent over the entire temperature range (77 to 3200 K) and energy range. A Monte Carlo code was implemented to apply the combined regression model and used to estimate the additional computing cost, which was found to be <1%.