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
Mathematics & Computation
Division members promote the advancement of mathematical and computational methods for solving problems arising in all disciplines encompassed by the Society. They place particular emphasis on numerical techniques for efficient computer applications to aid in the dissemination, integration, and proper use of computer codes, including preparation of computational benchmark and development of standards for computing practices, and to encourage the development on new computer codes and broaden their use.
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.”
Andrew G. Buchan, Adam S. Candy, Simon R. Merton, Christopher C. Pain, Justin I. Hadi, Matthew D. Eaton, Anthony J. H. Goddard, Richard P. Smedley-Stevenson, Gregory J. Pearce
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 164 | Number 2 | February 2010 | Pages 105-121
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE08-82
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a new multiscale radiation transport method based on a Galerkin finite element spatial discretization of the Boltzmann transport equation. The approach incorporates a discontinuous subgrid scale (SGS) solution within the continuous finite element representation of the spatial variables. While the conventional discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method provides accurate and numerically stable solutions that suppress unphysical oscillations, the number of unknowns is relatively high. The key advantage of the proposed SGS approach is that the solutions are represented within the continuous finite element space, and therefore, the number of unknowns compared with DG is relatively low.The applications of this method are explored using linear finite elements, and some of the advantages of this new discretization over standard Petrov-Galerkin methods are demonstrated. The numerical examples are chosen to be demanding steady-state mono-energetic radiation transport problems that are likely to form unphysical oscillations within numerical scalar flux solutions. The numerical examples also provide evidence that the SGS method has a thick diffusion limit. This method is designed to work under arbitrary angular discretizations, so solutions using both spherical harmonics and discrete ordinates are presented.