ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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!
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2024
Nuclear Technology
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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.
Masao Yamanaka, Cheol Ho Pyeon
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 4 | April 2019 | Pages 404-416
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1525978
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To elucidate the accuracy of benchmarks of criticality at the Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA), uncertainty analysis is conducted for manufacturing tolerances in highly enriched uranium (HEU) plates and modeling of core configurations in addition to nuclear data. For evaluation of eigenvalue bias, eigenvalue calculations are conducted using MCNP6.1 and SCALE6.2/KENO-VI together with ENDF/B-VII.1. The modeling of reference core configurations and material properties with average values is validated through a comparison between calculated and measured results. The uncertainty induced by nuclear data is evaluated with SCALE6.2/TSUNAMI-3D together with ENDF/B-VII.1 for sensitivity calculations and 56groupcov.7.1 for the covariance matrix. In the breakdown of the uncertainty induced by nuclear data, the impact of 235U shows significant dominance, about 900 pcm in hard and soft spectrum cores. Furthermore, uncertainty evaluation by manufacturing tolerances in HEU plates and reproducibility of control rod positions demonstrates that the impact of variation on measured reactivity is minor. Through experimental analyses, the index of accuracy in benchmark experiments of criticality is conducive to the reliability of benchmarks at KUCA.