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
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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
General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Qingmin Zhang, Zhigang Hu, Bangjie Deng, Mengxuan Xu, Yuhang Guo
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 186 | Number 3 | June 2017 | Pages 293-302
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2016.1273619
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The self-powered neutron detector (SPND) is popularly used as an in-core neutron flux monitor in reactors due to its simple structure, self-powered feature. However, its response delay needs compensation to obtain the actual real-time neutron flux for reactor control and protection. In this paper, a simple iterative method for compensating SPND response delay is proposed as well as noise filtering. Two favorable noise filtering methods were compared, and then, the moving average filter was chosen. The governing differential equations were established according to decay mechanism, and then, iterative compensation relations for delay compensation were established by discretization with simplicity and flexibility. The test result shows that the compensated response delay for a prompt jump of neutron flux is only 0.9 s, indicating its effectiveness. Furthermore, the dependence on initial conditions and sampling time interval was also studied, indicating that two initial condition determination modes for two typical detector start-up situations can be chosen correspondingly for delay minimization and critical sampling with a time interval of about 0.7 s, which shows consistency with the Von Neumann stability analysis. Finally, our method has been compared with the Z-transform method and verified with measured current, which showed its better performance.