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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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Christmas Night
Twas the night before Christmas when all through the houseNo electrons were flowing through even my mouse.
All devices were plugged in by the chimney with careWith the hope that St. Nikola Tesla would share.
Lei Jin, Kaushik Banerjee
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 191 | Number 3 | September 2018 | Pages 248-261
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1471269
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is widely used to solve the eigenvalue form of the Boltzmann transport equation that mathematically represents the neutron transport process through complex multiplying (fissionable) systems. Monte Carlo eigenvalue simulation starts with an assumed fission source distribution and uses the fission sites from the previous iteration (cycle) as the starting source in the current iteration. Important system parameters (MC tallies) such as fuel pin-power distribution are estimated over several cycles after the convergence of the fission source distribution to a stationary distribution. However, the MC fission source iteration algorithm that uses fission source sites from the previous cycle introduces a cycle-to-cycle correlation. Monte Carlo simulations that do not account for the cycle-to-cycle correlation systematically underestimate the variance of the estimated system parameters (sample mean). This paper presents the relationship between the spectral density in the frequency domain at frequency zero and the variance of the sample mean. This paper introduces a novel method in the frequency domain for the MC variance estimation. For the three test problems used in this paper, researchers have observed that the new method results in an improvement of more than one order of magnitude to the standard deviation of the sample mean. The new method also compares favorably with the previously introduced batch, bootstrap, and covariance-adjusted methods when applied to the three test problems investigated in this paper. This new method does not require modification of the MC eigenvalue algorithm (power iteration), is code agnostic, and is therefore easy to use when implementing in any existing MC code. The new estimate can be calculated without saving tally results of all active/stationary cycles.