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
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
D. C. Leslie, A. Jonsson
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 23 | Number 1 | September 1965 | Pages 82-89
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A19261
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a previous paper Leslie, Hill and Jonsson put forward a method for the rapid evaluation of the Dancoff factor in regular arrays of fuel rods. They also showed how extended rational approximations to the fuel nonescape probability could be used to improve the form of the equivalence theorem based on Wigner's rational approximation. This form of equivalence asserts that the resonance integral is a function of the geometry through the excess potential scattering 1/N only, where N is the number density of the absorber and is the mean chord. In the modification proposed by Leslie, Hill and Jonsson, this function is generalized to a/N; the Bell factor a is found to vary with coolant density. By making use of an approximate analytic method for the calculation of collision probabilities in geometries more general than regular arrays, the present authors extend this work to cluster-type fuel elements. The basic procedure is the same as in the work referred to above. An analytic expression for the fuel-to-fuel collision probability is derived using arguments about its behavior in the black and white limits (i.e. in the limits of high and low cross sections). The Dancoff factor is derived from the behavior in the black limit. It is shown, by comparison with exact calculations, that for two types of cluster geometry of current interest in fuel element design, the proposed Dancoff factor is in error by at most 2%. Improved equivalence relations for cluster geometry are also considered. It has been customary to assume that the cluster is equivalent to an isolated rod of diameter dp/Γ, where dp is the diameter of a single pin in the cluster and Γ is the Dancoff factor. Such a procedure implies that the Bell factor of the cluster is constant and equal to its value for an isolated rod. It is shown in this paper that the Bell factor is a function of coolant density and that, in a particular case, the cluster is almost equivalent to an isolated rod at low density. As the density increases, the Bell factor drops rapidly by 6% and then increases slowly.
