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
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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
Jul 2024
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
ARPA-E announces $40 million to develop transmutation technologies for UNF
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
Ansar Calloo, Jean-François Vidal, Romain Le Tellier, Gérald Rimpault
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 180 | Number 2 | June 2015 | Pages 182-198
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE14-57
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In reactor physics, calculation schemes with deterministic codes are validated with respect to a reference Monte Carlo code. The remaining biases are attributed to the approximations and models induced by the multigroup theory (self-shielding models and expansion of the scattering law on Legendre polynomials) to represent physical phenomena (resonant absorption and scattering anisotropy). This work focuses on the relevance of a polynomial expansion to model the scattering law. Since the outset of reactor physics, the latter has been expanded on a truncated Legendre polynomial basis. However, the transfer cross sections are highly anisotropic, with nonzero values for a small range of the scattering angle. The finer the energy mesh and the lighter the scattering nucleus, the more exacerbated is the peaked shape of these cross sections. As such, the Legendre expansion is less well suited to represent the scattering law. Furthermore, this model induces negative values, which are nonphysical. Piecewise-constant functions have been used to represent the multigroup scattering cross section. This representation requires a different model for the diffusion source. Thus, the finite-volume method for angular discretization has been developed and implemented in the PARIS environment. This method is adapted for both the Legendre moments and the piecewise-constant functions representations. It provides reference deterministic results that validate the standard Legendre polynomial representation with a P3 expansion.