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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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.”
Akio Yamamoto, Masayuki Toujou, Kentarou Komori, Yasunori Kitamura, Yoshihiro Yamane
Nuclear Technology | Volume 154 | Number 3 | June 2006 | Pages 318-327
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper, new optimization algorithms for the in-core fuel shuffling sequence of a boiling water reactor (BWR) are proposed to reduce outage time. During the short outage of a BWR, fuel shuffling can be a critical path in the periodic overall plant inspection. Therefore, a reduction in operation time for in-core fuel shuffling is essential to improve the plant capacity factor. For BWR in-core fuel shuffling, the shuffling sequence should be selected carefully since a fuel shuffling operation may affect those following it. Furthermore, several constraints must be satisfied during the in-core fuel shuffling of a BWR; e.g., two fuel assemblies must be inserted diagonally in a cell to fix the position of a control blade in it. Therefore, it is difficult to optimize BWR in-core fuel shuffling. In order to resolve this issue, new optimization methods are proposed, and the performances of some optimization algorithms are compared. Test calculations in actual BWR plants reveal that the workload for in-core fuel shuffling can be reduced by the proposed methods. The results of this paper will contribute to increasing the plant capacity factor by reducing the outage time.
