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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
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
El Salvador: Looking to nuclear
In 2022, El Salvador’s leadership decided to expand its modest, mostly hydro- and geothermal-based electricity system, which is supported by expensive imported natural gas and diesel generation. They chose to use advanced nuclear reactors, preferably fueled by thorium-based fuels, to power their civilian efforts. The choice of thorium was made to inform the world that the reactor program was for civilian purposes only, and so they chose a fuel that was plentiful, easy to source and work with, and not a proliferation risk.
Jin-Yang Li, Long Gu, Hu-Shan Xu, Yong Dai, You-Peng Zhang, Cun-Feng Yao, Rui Yu, Lu Zhang, Sheng Yang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 2 | February 2021 | Pages 270-284
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1757963
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To study the burnup features of accelerator-driven subcritical systems (ADSs), simplified transmutation trajectories are imperative to make the simulation process more effective with acceptable precision. This process has long been considered a challenging task since the construction of simplified burnup chains often need complex judgments and experiences. Additionally, the burnup analysis of ADSs requires more specific burnup chains for some important isotopes with minor actinides (MAs) and long-lived fission products (LLFPs) included. However, some general burnup codes lack these chains or pack some particularly important isotopes into a kind of pseudo nuclide. In this context, a PyNE-based burnup module (PyNE-Burn) has been developed to solve the burnup problem in ADSs, where three types of isotopes have been considered to construct the simplified burnup chains and weight-sorted judgment criteria have been proposed to determine which nuclides should be included. Moreover, the scan-mode-method-based high-order differential expression has been employed to substitute the legacy method in solving the linearized burnup chains. Finally, numerical tests have been carried out to demonstrate that the PyNE-Burn module has acceptable accuracy and can be used in dealing with the burnup problem in ADSs.