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
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
A. Borella, K. Volev, A. Brusegan, P. Schillebeeckx, F. Corvi, N. Koyumdjieva, N. Janeva, A. A. Lukyanov
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 152 | Number 1 | January 2006 | Pages 1-14
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-A2557
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neutron capture cross section of thorium has been measured in the energy region between 4 and 140 keV at the GELINA time-of-flight facility of the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements in Geel, Belgium. The gamma rays from capture events were detected by two C6D6 liquid scintillators, placed 14.37 m from the neutron source. The shape of the neutron flux was measured with a 10B-loaded ionization chamber. To obtain a detection efficiency independent of the gamma cascade and proportional to the total excitation energy, the pulse-height weighting technique was applied. The data have been normalized to the well-isolated and almost saturated 232Th resonance at 23.5 eV. The systematic uncertainties related to the normalization and weighting function, using an internal saturated resonance, are ~1.5%. An additional systematic uncertainty of 0.5% results from the self-shielding and multiple scattering corrections.Between 4 and 140 keV, our data are ~9 and 6.5% higher than the data of Kobayashi et al. and Macklin et al., respectively, and in good agreement with the data of Poenitz and Smith. Below 15 keV our data deviate by up to 30% from the data reported by Wisshak et al. Our data have been analyzed in terms of average level parameters. The resulting parameters are consistent with the resolved resonance parameters deduced from the transmission measurements of Olsen et al.