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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
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!
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Latest News
First astatine-labeled compound shipped in the U.S.
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
Ang Zhu, Brendan Kochunas, Yunlin Xu, Michael Jarrett, Edward Larsen, Thomas Downar
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 186 | Number 3 | June 2017 | Pages 224-238
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1293408
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The lower bounds for the theoretical convergence rate of variants of the Coarse Mesh Finite Difference (CMFD) method for neutron transport acceleration are studied in this paper by generalization of the method into three categories: artificially diffusive CMFD, flux relaxation, and higher-order spatial prolongation operators. A Fourier analysis of the methods demonstrates that artificial diffusion and flux relaxation are mathematically equivalent and arbitrarily scale the coarse mesh to fine mesh projection (CMP) vector. The high-order spatial prolongation method is shown to affect the shape of the CMP vector. As a result, any of the CMFD variants based on these three sets of modifications correspond to a specific CMP vector. The optimization process is performed for the multidimensional vector, and the minimum spectral radius among all possible CMP vectors is shown to be the theoretical lower bound for the CMFD convergence rate. The spectral radius associated with the CMFD convergence rate lower bound is found to be slightly smaller (less than 0.04) than optimally diffusive CMFD(odCMFD), and the difference between odCMFD to the CMFD lower bound is much smaller than the difference between both standard CMFD and partial current–based CMFD to the CMFD lower bound. In addition, the odCMFD method has a distinct advantage in ease of implementation and minimal overhead. Conversely, the implementation necessary to achieve the CMFD lower bound would be very complicated, especially for two- and three-dimensional problems.