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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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!
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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.”
Seung Hwan Seong, Un Chul Lee, Si Hwan Kim, Jin Wook Jang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 128 | Number 2 | November 1999 | Pages 276-283
Technical Paper | Reactor Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A3031
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new analytic model based on hidden-layer neural networks is designed to analyze load-follow operation in a pressurized water reactor (PWR). The new model is mainly made up of four error backpropagation neural networks and procedures to calculate core parameters such as k and xenon distributions in a transient core. The first two neural networks are designed to retrieve the power distribution, the third is for axial offset, and the fourth is for reactivity corresponding to a given core condition. The training data sets are generated by three-dimensional nodal code and the measured data of the first-day load-follow operation. The simulation results of the 5-day load-follow test in a PWR using the new analytic model show that it is an attractive tool for plant simulations in terms of accuracy, computing time, cost, and adaptability to measurements.
