ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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!
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Latest News
First astatine-labeled compound shipped in the U.S.
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
Tom Burr, Jeremy Conlin, Jianwei Hu, Jack Galloway, Vladimir Henzl, Howard Menlove, Martyn Swinhoe, Stephen Tobin, Holly Trellue, Timothy Ulrich
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 172 | Number 2 | October 2012 | Pages 180-192
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-73
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Estimating plutonium (Pu) mass in spent nuclear fuel assemblies (SFAs) helps inspectors ensure that no Pu is diverted. Therefore, nondestructive assay (NDA) methods are being developed to assay Pu mass in SFAs. Uncertainty quantification is an important task in most assay methods, and particularly for SFA assay. A computer model (MCNPX) is being used to predict isotope masses and the spatial distribution of masses in virtual SFAs for 64 combinations of initial fuel enrichment (IE), fuel utilization [burnup (BU)], and cooling time (CT) values. Additional MCNPX modeling for the same 64 virtual SFAs provided the expected detector responses (DRs) for several NDA techniques such as the passive neutron albedo reactivity method and the 252Cf interrogation with prompt neutrons method.A previous paper describes one uncertainty quantification approach involving Monte Carlo (MC) simulation using individually any of six new NDA options together with IE, BU, and CT. This paper provides an interpretation of the MC approach that is suited for a numerical Bayesian alternative, separately assesses the impact of MCNPX interpolation error, and compares several options to use subsets of IE, BU, CT, and one DR.
