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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
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Ding She, Ang Zhu, Kan Wang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 175 | Number 3 | November 2013 | Pages 259-265
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-48
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Burnup calculations consider the time dependence of the material composition or isotope inventory, which has important influence on the neutronic properties of a nuclear reactor. An essential part of burnup calculations is to solve the burnup equations, which can be approximately treated as a first-order linear system and can be solved by means of matrix exponential methods. However, because of the large decay constants of short-lived nuclides, the coefficient matrix of the burnup equations has a large norm and a vast range of spectra. Consequently, it is quite difficult to directly compute the matrix exponential using conventional methods such as the truncated Taylor expansion and the Pade approximation. Recently, the Chebyshev rational approximation method (CRAM), which is based on rational functions on the complex plane, has shown the capability to deal with this problem. In this paper an alternative method based on the generalized Laguerre polynomials is proposed to compute the exponential of the burnup matrix. Against CRAM, the Laguerre polynomial approximation method (LPAM) has simple recursions for obtaining the coefficients in any order, and all the computations are real arithmetic. A point burnup case and a pin-cell burnup case are calculated for validation, and results show that LPAM is promising for burnup calculations.