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
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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
Aug 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2024
Latest News
New laws offer nuclear industry incentives for existing power plant uprates
This year, the U.S. nuclear industry received a much-needed economic boost that could help preserve operating nuclear power plants and incentivize upgrades that extend their lifespan and power output.
Signed into law in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act offers production tax credits (PTCs) for existing nuclear power plants and either PTCs or investment tax credits (ITCs) for new carbon-free generation. These credits could make power uprates—increasing the maximum power level at which a commercial plant may operate—a much more appealing option for utilities.
Kirk Mathews, Glenn Sjoden, Bryan Minor
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 118 | Number 1 | September 1994 | Pages 24-37
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE94-A19019
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The exponential characteristic spatial quadrature for discrete ordinates neutral particle transport in slab geometry is derived and compared with current methods. It is similar to the linear characteristic (or, in slab geometry, the linear nodal) quadrature but differs by assuming an exponential distribution of the scattering source within each cell, S(x) = a exp(bx), whose parameters are root-solved to match the known (from the previous iteration) average and first moment of the source over the cell. Like the linear adaptive method, the exponential characteristic method is positive and nonlinear but more accurate and more readily extended to other cell shapes. The nonlinearity has not interfered with convergence. We introduce the Technical Paperexponential moment functions,” a generalization of the functions used by Walters in the linear nodal method, and use them to avoid numerical ill-conditioning. The method exhibits O(Δx4) truncation error on fine enough meshes; the error is insensitive to mesh size for coarse meshes. In a shielding problem, it is accurate to 10% using 16-mfp-thick cells; conventional methods err by 8 to 15 orders of magnitude. The exponential characteristic method is computationally more costly per cell than current methods but can be accurate with very thick cells, leading to increased computational efficiency on appropriate problems.