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
Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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.”
Dipanjan Ray, Manish Kumar, Om Pal Singh, Prabhat Munshi
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 4 | April 2022 | Pages 478-496
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.1987134
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Considerable studies have been carried out to evaluate the feasibility of the breed and burn (B&B) concept over the last few decades by applying various simplified or more practical methodologies. In this note, similar studies are performed by improving the simplified methodology used by Kumar and Singh in “A Study of Transverse Buckling Effect on the Characteristics of Nuclides Burnup Wave in a Fast Neutron Multiplying Media,” [Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Sciience, Vol. 5, p. 4 (2019)] and in other international studies. A consistent parametric approach is adopted for the study on buildup and propagation of a nuclear fuel burnup wave in a fast neutron multiplying medium for two-dimensional cylindrical geometry with azimuthal symmetry. The Multiphysics finite element computational code COMSOL is utilized to solve coupled multigroup neutron diffusion and burnup equations in the U-Pu cycle. The characteristics of the wave are evaluated in terms of transient time (TT) and transient length (TL); TT and TL represent the time and distance covered by the wave in establishing a sustained fuel burnup wave, respectively. The steady-state space is characterized by wave velocity and reaction zone width (full-width at half-maximum and full-width at 10% of maximum).
The results of this study are presented in terms of the characteristics of the transient and steady-state parameters to assess the feasibility of a fuel burnup wave. It is concluded that a sustained fuel burnup wave (about 10 years in a reactor of 5-m length) is attainable in application of the B&B concept in traveling wave technology, although optimization of the transient wave parameters (TT of 1100 days and TL of 2.614 m) is necessary to prolong reactor operating life. The results of the present improved model are compared with the results of Kumar and Singh’s simplified model by performing a sensitivity study of the characterization parameters with radius. Variation of TL with respect to radius (decrement of about 10.6% in the modified model and about 5.4% in the simplified one with the increment in reactor radius from 1.1 to 1.3 m) is relatively less compared to the variation observed for TT (decrement of about 76.5% for the modified approach and about 19.1% for the simplified case). The sensitivity of the wave parameters is studied for different values of neutron source strength used in the analysis.
