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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
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.
Dağıstan Şahin, Kenan Ünlü, Kostadin Ivanov
Nuclear Technology | Volume 194 | Number 3 | June 2016 | Pages 324-339
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-110
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The main goal of this study is to verify the accuracy of burnup-coupled neutronic calculations when employing the Monte Carlo Utility for Reactor Evolutions (MURE) and MCNP5 codes for modeling TRIGA-type reactors, in this case the Penn State Breazeale Reactor (PSBR) core. Research and educational requirements mainly direct the PSBR operating schedule. With such operating schedules, one particular area of concern, specifically relating to nuclear analytical applications, is time-dependent changes in the neutronic characteristics of the reactor, specifically within the irradiation positions. Particular concern exists among scientists performing neutron activation analysis measurements as to whether continuous variations in reactor operations would cause significant fluctuations in the neutronic characterization parameters of the irradiation positions. A secondary objective of this study is to analyze fluctuations in the neutronic characterization parameters and their dependence on various core conditions as examined by detailed burnup-coupled neutronic simulations. In this study, a burnup-coupled neutronic simulation model of the PSBR is developed using the MURE and MCNP5 codes. The simulation results are verified by a series of experiments including measurements of the core excess reactivity starting from the first core loading in 1965 to 2012, control rod worth, fission product buildup, temperature-dependent reactivity loss, integral control rod worth curves, individual fuel element worth, and neutron flux. Local neutronic calculations of the simulation are confirmed by measuring neutronic characterization parameters for one of the irradiation positions within the PSBR core, namely, dry irradiation tube 1. Analyzing time-dependent data predicted by the simulation, the neutron temperature and the measure of the nonideal epithermal neutron flux distribution are found to be reasonably static. Conversely, the thermal-to-epithermal neutron flux ratio and spectral index are found to be relatively responsive to alterations in the core.
