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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Chan-Hyeong Kim, Siyoung Jang, Warren Dan Reece
Nuclear Technology | Volume 145 | Number 1 | January 2004 | Pages 1-10
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3455
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) code and a set of high-temperature neutron cross-section data were used to develop an accurate three-dimensional computational model of the Texas A&M University Nuclear Science Center Reactor (NSCR) at full power. The geometry of the reactor core was modeled as closely as possible including the details of all the fuel elements and control rods. The most significant approximation was made for entrained fission products because of the lack of knowledge of fission product inventory in the current reactor core. This study used the concept of "average fission product" to model the fission product in the reactor core and determined the concentration of the average fission product by repeating criticality calculations to make the reactor critical for a given critical condition. Finally, the developed model was tested by comparing the calculated results with those of other approaches, i.e., (a) an in-house three-dimensional diffusion code and (b) foil activation measurement. The developed reactor model showed a good agreement with these approaches. The developed model predicted the thermal neutron flux in samples within 11% of difference when compared with the results from the diffusion code and predicted the production of 198Au and 60Co within ~20% of difference when compared with the values measured with foils. The developed model also calculated the neutron energy spectrum very consistently with the other approaches for the entire energy range considered in this study.