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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
IAEA project aims to develop polymer irradiation model
The International Atomic Energy Agency has launched a new coordinated research project (CRP) aimed at creating a database of polymer-radiation interactions in the next five years with the long-term goal of using the database to enable machine learning–based predictive models.
Radiation-induced modifications are widely applicable across a range of fields including healthcare, agriculture, and environmental applications, and exposure to radiation is a major factor when considering materials used at nuclear power plants.
A. F. Henry
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 20 | Number 3 | November 1964 | Pages 338-351
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A19579
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For a large power reactor it appears possible to describe nonseparable space-time kinetics transients in terms of a particular set of spatial harmonics to be called inhour modes. These modes are defined as a subset of the period modes obtained by assuming a separable time variation ewt for all variables in the source-free, time-dependent neutron and neutron-precursor equations. Their use is appropriate whenever details of the neutron energy and angular behavior are not required. Inhour modes are shown to occur in clusters of seven, the seven eigenvalues of a given cluster being obtained as the roots of an inhour equation appropriate to the cluster. The neutron flux shapes associated with a particular cluster of seven modes are all approximately the same. It is shown that if these shapes are assumed to be identical, certain useful orthogonality relations and certain identities involving the roots of the inhour formula for a given cluster are obtained. Use of these results simplifies the extension of the conventional equations of reactor kinetics to the nonseparable case. Inhour modes are also useful in analyzing certain experiments involving subcritical assemblies. As an illustration, application to the source-jerk and pulsed-source experiments is made.