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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.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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Nuclear News 40 Under 40 discuss the future of nuclear
Seven members of the inaugural Nuclear News 40 Under 40 came together on March 4 to discuss the current state of nuclear energy and what the future might hold for science, industry, and the public in terms of nuclear development.
To hear more insights from this talented group of young professionals, watch the “40 Under 40 Roundtable: Perspectives from Nuclear’s Rising Stars” on the ANS website.
Edward W. Larsen, Blake W. Kelley
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 178 | Number 1 | September 2014 | Pages 1-15
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-47
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The coarse-mesh finite difference (CMFD) and the coarse-mesh diffusion synthetic acceleration (CMDSA) methods are widely used, independently developed methods for accelerating the iterative convergence of deterministic neutron transport calculations. In this paper, we show that these methods have the following theoretical relationship: If the standard notion of diffusion synthetic acceleration as a fine-mesh method is straightforwardly generalized to a coarse-mesh method, then the linearized form of the CMFD method is algebraically equivalent to a CMDSA method. We also show theoretically (via Fourier analysis) and experimentally (via simulations) that for fixed-source problems, the CMDSA and CMFD methods have nearly identical convergence rates. Our numerical results confirm the close theoretically predicted relationship between these methods.