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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2025
Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
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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