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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.”
Kazuki Hida, Ritsuo Yoshioka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | March 1988 | Pages 423-430
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34066
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The axial enrichment distribution of boiling water reactor fuel is optimized to improve uranium utilization subject to constraints on thermal margins. It is assumed that the reactor is operated under the Haling strategy, so that determination of the enrichment distribution can be decoupled from the poison management. This nonlinear optimization problem is solved using a method of approximation programming, where each iteration step is formulated in terms of linear goal programming to handle infeasible problems. The core is represented by an axial one-dimensional model. The average enrichment of a two-region fuel can be slightly reduced by increasing the enrichment of the lower half rather than the upper half. The optimal solutions for a 24-region fuel, in which the enrichments of individual nodes can differ from one another, display double-humped enrichment distributions. The natural uranium blanket design is also investigated, and it is concluded that blanketed fuel is practically optimal using the Haling strategy.
