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
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Cihangir Celik, Douglas E. Peplow, Gregory G. Davidson, Mathew W. Swinney
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 12 | December 2019 | Pages 1355-1370
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1631028
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For a radiation detector that is not isotropic, a directional detector response is needed to accurately account for the variation in a detector’s behavior depending on the incoming particle direction. The concept of the detector response function has been extended to include particle direction using a set of pregenerated detector responses based on the orientation of the incoming radiation and the detector. This directional detector response function (DDRF) then can be applied to the flux and current tallies computed by a Monte Carlo simulation. Validation of the new approach has been done by comparing simulated count rates processed with the DDRF to measured count rates taken with a 5.08 × 10.16 × 40.64-cm NaI(Tl) detector. The comparisons show that the applied method produces good agreement with both background and source measurements with a 137Cs source. Furthermore, separation of the detector response generation from Monte Carlo particle transport calculations provides greater flexibility in locating single or multiple detectors without any interference in the model and also enables simulation of various models using the same detector response without the need for generating additional detector responses if the same detector is being used.