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Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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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.”
G. P. Nyalunga, V. V. Naicker
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 3 | March 2024 | Pages 640-657
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2205198
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD/NEA) benchmark has been established over recent years to satisfy an increasing demand from the nuclear community for best-estimate predictions accompanied by uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. The main objectives of the OECD/NEA benchmark activity are to determine uncertainties in modeling for reactor systems using best-estimate methods under steady-state and transient conditions and to quantify the impact of these uncertainties for each type of calculation in multiphysics analyses. In terms of light water reactor analyses, an international uncertainty analysis, “Benchmarks for Uncertainty Analysis in Modelling (UAM) for the Design, Operation and Safety Analysis of LWRs” is currently in progress, being coordinated by the OECD/NEA. In the neutronic phases of the benchmark, the uncertainty due to nuclear data is being studied for various LWR types.
The LCT086 benchmark, which is a VVER-type reactor criticality benchmark experiment, has been identified to form part of the validation matrix for the uncertainty methodology development. Resulting from this, the main focus of the present work is to propagate the uncertainty due to the nuclear data for two cases (LCT086/Case1 and LCT086/Case3) presented in the LCT086 benchmark. Both fuel assembly and core models were used for the analysis. The code package used to perform the calculations was SCALE 6.2.1. In particular, the function modules KENO-VI, SAMPLER, and TSUNAMI-3D of SCALE 6.2.1 were used. MCNP 6.1 was also used for continuous-energy criticality calculations.
In addition to propagating the uncertainty due to the nuclear data, the uncertainty due to selected input parameters as bounded by the manufacturing tolerances were also propagated so that the modeling methods employed could be verified against those reported in the LCT086 benchmark. The results obtained for the nuclear data uncertainty were further compared with nuclear data uncertainty propagation results for the OECD/NEA UAM Kozloduy-6 reactor system. The uncertainty in the multiplication factor is reported in pcm together with the main contributors to the uncertainty from the nuclear data reported in .
