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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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Crash Course: The DOE’s Package Performance Demonstration
Inspired by a history of similar testing endeavors and recommended by the National Academy of Sciences and the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, the Department of Energy is planning to conduct physical demonstrations on rail-sized spent nuclear fuel transportation casks. As part of the project, called the Spent Nuclear Fuel Package Performance Demonstration (PPD), the DOE is considering a number of demonstrations based on regulatory tests and realistic transportation scenarios, including collisions, drops, exposure to fire, and immersion in water.
Luis A. Perles, Dragan Mirkovic, Gabriel O. Sawakuchi, Uwe Titt
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 22-26
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 16th Biennial Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division / Radiation Biology; Radiation Used in Medicine | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12264
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this work we present a Monte Carlo study of proton irradiation of lung parenchyma phantoms for particle energies that are typically used for proton therapy, ranging from 150 to 200 MeV. The Bragg peaks of the proton beams were scored in a water phantom distal to voxelized slabs of lung material. A detailed lung parenchyma phantom was modeled and converted into a voxelized structure, with a resolution similar to that obtained by computed tomography, to study differences in the dose deposited by the proton beams distal to the phantom caused by merging small structures into larger voxels. The results show that the Bragg peak dose in water can vary by up to 11%, the distal edge degradation can be as large as 1.1 mm, and the maximum observed changes in the range at 90% of the dose are 0.4 mm in water. From our results, we conclude that computational proton dose predictions in a lung are associated with large uncertainties. To improve the accuracy of dose calculations, a more detailed model of lung parenchyma is needed.