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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Jeffrey A. Favorite, Keith C. Bledsoe
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 152 | Number 1 | January 2006 | Pages 106-117
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE152-106
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Schwinger method for solving inverse gamma-ray transport problems was proposed in a previous paper. The method is iterative and requires a set of uncoupled forward and adjoint transport calculations in each iteration. In this paper, the Schwinger inverse method is applied to the problem of identifying an unknown material in a radiation shield by calculating its total macroscopic photon cross sections. The gamma source (its energy and spatial distribution as well as the composition of the material) is known and the total (angle-independent) gamma leakage is measured. In numerical one-dimensional spherical and slab test problems, the Schwinger inverse method successfully calculated the photon cross sections of an unknown material. Material identification was successfully achieved by comparing the calculated cross sections with those in a precomputed material cross-section library, although there was some ambiguity when realistic measurements were used. The Schwinger inverse method compared very favorably with the standard single-energy transmission technique.
