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Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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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How to talk about nuclear
In your career as a professional in the nuclear community, chances are you will, at some point, be asked (or volunteer) to talk to at least one layperson about the technology you know and love. You might even be asked to present to a whole group of nonnuclear folks, perhaps as a pitch to some company tangential to your company’s business. So, without further ado, let me give you some pointers on the best way to approach this important and surprisingly complicated task.
Tsutomu Hoshino*
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 49 | Number 1 | September 1972 | Pages 59-71
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A22527
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The optimization of the multistage refueling decision process was studied by the heuristic approach for four-region batch refueling including shuffling. The current state of the process is assumed to be well characterized by so called heuristic features, as excess reactivity or peaking factor. The features are summed up with each weight, defining the decision evaluation function which should be maximized at each refueling by the best decision. Thus the final criterion, i.e., the average discharge burnup at the end of the whole reactor life can be regarded as a function of the weight and is maximized in the weight space by the hill climbing algorithm. The approach can also be interpreted as an attempt to determine, through learning, the general importances of the rules of thumb in the refueling policy as maximization of the excess reactivity or power flattening. A numerical simulation is given, and the maximum burnup, the refueling scheme, and the optimal weight are discussed in relation to the power-peaking factor constraint. Though the method is not guaranteed as for the optimality, reasonable solutions are obtained and the intuitive understanding of the process is possible by discussing the optimum weight of each rule.