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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Hash Hashemian: Visionary leadership
As Dr. Hashem M. “Hash” Hashemian prepares to step into his term as President of the American Nuclear Society, he is clear that he wants to make the most of this unique moment.
A groundswell in public approval of nuclear is finding a home in growing governmental support that is backed by a tailwind of technological innovation. “Now is a good time to be in nuclear,” Hashemian said, as he explained the criticality of this moment and what he hoped to accomplish as president.
Jeffrey A. Favorite, Zoltán Perkó, Brian C. Kiedrowski, Christopher M. Perfetti
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 185 | Number 3 | March 2017 | Pages 384-405
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2016.1272990
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The evaluation of uncertainties is essential for criticality safety. This paper deals with material density and composition uncertainties and provides guidance on how traditional first-order sensitivity methods can be used to predict their effects. Unlike problems that deal with traditional cross-section uncertainty analysis, material density and composition-related problems are often characterized by constraints that do not allow arbitrary and independent variations of the input parameters. Their proper handling requires constrained sensitivities that take into account the interdependence of the inputs. This paper discusses how traditional unconstrained isotopic density sensitivities can be calculated using the adjoint sensitivity capabilities of the popular Monte Carlo codes MCNP6 and SCALE 6.2, and we also present the equations to be used when forward and adjoint flux distributions are available. Subsequently, we show how the constrained sensitivities can be computed using the unconstrained (adjoint-based) sensitivities as well as by applying central differences directly. Three distinct procedures are presented for enforcing the constraint on the input variables, each leading to different constrained sensitivities. As a guide, the sensitivity and uncertainty formulas for several frequently encountered specific cases involving densities and compositions are given. An analytic k∞ example highlights the relationship between constrained sensitivity formulas and central differences, and a more realistic numerical problem reveals similarities among the computer codes used and differences among the three methods of enforcing the constraint.