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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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
Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
Jamal Al Zain, O. El Hajjaji, T. El Bardouni, M. Lahdour
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 4 | April 2020 | Pages 620-636
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1662669
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Syrian miniature neutron source reactor (MNSR), a 30-kW, 90.0% highly enriched uranium fueled (U-Al) MNSR-type reactor has gone critical. Under operating conditions of 2 h per day for 5 days a week at a peak thermal neutron flux of 1.0 × 1012 n/cm2·s, the estimated core life is 10 years. After the fuel is depleted, the full spent-fuel assembly will be replaced with new low-enriched uranium. This study presents the results of a multigroup fuel burnup and depletion analysis of the MNSR fuel lattice using the DRAGON5 transport lattice code. Furthermore, infinite multiplication factor k∞ and several two-group macroscopic parameters, including scattering cross section, fission cross section, total cross section, and diffusion coefficient, and the transport mean free path have been studied. In addition to this, fuel isotopic composition dependency on burnup was calculated as a part of this study. The results contained in this study can be used as a microscopic database for performing criticality safety analysis and shielding computations for the design of a spent-fuel storage cask for the MNSR reactor core.