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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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Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Elanchezhian Somasundaram, Todd S. Palmer
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 3 | March 2016 | Pages 391-403
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-43
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Local Importance Function Transform (LIFT) method is a sophisticated automated variance-reduction technique for Monte Carlo simulation of radiation transport problems. In previous publications, the LIFT method was tested on geometrically simple problems with a coarse representation of radiation energy dependence, and the performance of the method was found to be promising when compared to traditional weight windows–based variance-reduction techniques. In this work, the LIFT method is tested on a spatially complex benchmark test problem with a more realistic representation of energy dependence (50 energy groups) and heterogeneous materials. The performance of the method in comparison with a CADIS (Consistent Adjoint Driven Importance Sampling)–based weight windows method and an analog Monte Carlo simulation is studied. A multigroup Monte Carlo code that utilizes portions of the framework of the deterministic tool Attila has been developed such that the overhead time in implementing the variance-reduction techniques is minimal. The Monte Carlo simulations are performed on an arbitrary tetrahedral mesh created by the mesh generator in Attila. A method to transfer the deterministic solution generated on a finer mesh to a coarser mesh for implementing the hybrid simulations has been developed, and the results are quantified.
