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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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ANS joins others in seeking to discuss SNF/HLW impasse
The American Nuclear Society joined seven other organizations to send a letter to Energy Secretary Christopher Wright on July 8, asking to meet with him to discuss “the restoration of a highly functioning program to meet DOE’s legal responsibility to manage and dispose of the nation’s commercial and legacy defense spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW).”
G. C. Pomraning
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 29 | Number 2 | August 1967 | Pages 220-236
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A18531
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is shown that variational principles need not be postulated and then correctness proved; they can, in fact, be derived, making their use more a matter of routine than ingenuity. A Lagrange multiplier technique is used to derive a second-order variational principle for estimating an arbitrary functional of the solution to an inhomogeneous equation. The relationship of this principle to a functional Taylor series expansion and to elementary perturbation theory is established. A normalization independent second-order variational principle for an arbitrary functional is derived which reduces to the Schwinger principle if the functional is linear. Two higher order variational principles are derived and shown to be generalizations of the principles of Kostin and Brooks. The Lagrange multiplier technique is applied to the inhomogeneous Sturm-Liouville equation, which leads to a second-order variational principle for estimating an arbitrary functional which allows trial functions that are not continuous and do not satisfy the boundary conditions. This functional is of the type suggested by Buslik plus boundary terms. The differences between a variational principle which can only be used to estimate a functional of interest and one which also acts as a Lagrangian are discussed.