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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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!
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
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Latest News
TerraPower begins U.K. regulatory approval process
Seattle-based TerraPower signaled its interest this week in building its Natrium small modular reactor in the United Kingdom, the company announced.
TerraPower sent a letter to the U.K.’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, formally establishing its intention to enter the U.K. generic design assessment (GDA) process. This is TerraPower’s first step in deployment of its Natrium technology—a 345-MW sodium fast reactor coupled with a molten salt energy storage unit—on the international stage.
W. S. Yang, G. Palmiotti, E. E. Lewis
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 139 | Number 2 | October 2001 | Pages 174-185
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2230
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Numerical methods based on transformation of variables are developed to improve the computational efficiency of the variational nodal method (VNM). Reordering and orthogonal transformations of the nodal unknowns are found to reduce the coefficient matrices of VNM into block-diagonal forms. These forms make it possible to reduce greatly the number of floating-point operations in matrix manipulations and hence to reduce the computational times. The red-black response matrix acceleration by transformation of interface partial-current variables has been extended to three-dimensional geometries and higher orders of spatial and angular approximations. These combined methods are incorporated within the algorithms currently used in the variational nodal code VARIANT at Argonne National Laboratory. All primary algorithms ranging from the generation of response matrices to the iterative solution method for the response matrix equations are modified to implement the new formulation. The efficiency of the new methods is tested on eigenvalue problems by comparing the computation times of the new and existing methods. Three-dimensional calculations are performed in hexagonal and Cartesian geometry for various spatial and angular approximations. The test results show that very significant gains can be obtained especially for the coupling coefficient calculations in higher angular approximations. More than an order of magnitude reduction of the total computing time is achieved in the best case.
