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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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!
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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.
F. H. Fröhner
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 145 | Number 3 | November 2003 | Pages 342-353
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE03-A2387
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Application-oriented evaluated nuclear data libraries such as ENDF and JEFF contain not only recommended values but also uncertainty information in the form of "covariance" or "error files." These can neither be constructed nor utilized properly without a thorough understanding of uncertainties and correlations. It is shown how incomplete information about errors is described by multivariate probability distributions or, more summarily, by covariance matrices, and how correlations are caused by incompletely known common errors. Parameter estimation for the practically most important case of the Gaussian distribution with common errors is developed in close analogy to the more familiar case without. The formalism shows that, contrary to widespread belief, common ("systematic") and uncorrelated ("random" or "statistical") errors are to be added in quadrature. It also shows explicitly that repetition of a measurement reduces mainly the statistical uncertainties but not the systematic ones. While statistical uncertainties are readily estimated from the scatter of repeatedly measured data, systematic uncertainties can only be inferred from prior information about common errors and their propagation. The optimal way to handle error-affected auxiliary quantities ("nuisance parameters") in data fitting and parameter estimation is to adjust them on the same footing as the parameters of interest and to integrate (marginalize) them out of the joint posterior distribution afterward.