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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Workshop
Sunday, September 25, 2022|1:00–5:00PM PDT|Seaport
Attila4MC provides MCNP® 6.2 users with a graphical user interface based environment to set up, run, and visualize MCNP unstructured mesh solutions from complex CAD geometries. Attila4MC also includes the unstructured mesh Attila deterministic solver for weight windows variance reduction using the CADIS and FW-CADIS methods.
In this workshop, new and existing features of Attila4MC will be demonstrated on a realistic shielding example. The new Attila4MC mesh generator will also be introduced, which is capable of building unstructured mesh models from dirty CAD assemblies with interferences and hundreds or thousands of parts. Other new features will also be demonstrated, including the LDAS (linear discontinuous adaptive step) spatial discretization algorithm for CADIS and FW-CADIS, which produces accurate and smooth solutions for efficient weight windows.
The second half of this workshop is hands-on, where attendees will set up, run, and visualize a deep penetration shielding model starting with a CAD model. Both the CADIS and FW-CADIS variance reduction models will be employed. A secondary solution will also be generated using the Attila deterministic solver. Attendees wishing to run Attila4MC should bring a Windows 10 or 11 laptop with at least 6 GB of RAM. Attendees wishing to also run MCNP must have MCNP 6.2.0 installed. Attendees are invited to bring their own CAD models (Parasolid® or ACIS® formats preferable), as the last hour will include an optional open workshop allowing users to work through their own models with help from Silver Fir Software instructors.
The workshop will conclude with a 30-minute demonstration by Kinectrics of ADEPT, a first-of-its-kind application that leverages the latest virtual reality (VR) technologies to generate an interactive 3D scenario for visualizing and modifying dose rate fields and isotopic activities. The dose rate fields used for input can be generated from Attila/Attila4MC calculations, and from actual scans of radioactive sources. Kinectrics has expanded on ADEPT’s capabilities by partnering with Cavendish Nuclear to create the ADEPT-PSIM process, which utilizes the Cavendish PSIM tool to more accurately characterize radioactive sources from multiple rad scans.
All attendees will receive a 1 month license of Attila4MC following the workshop. For any questions regarding the workshop, contact support@silverfirsoftware.com.
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