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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.
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International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Peter Song, Joe Holder, Bruce Young, Dan Kalantar, David Eder, Joe Kimbrough
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 1035-1039
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering and Diagnostics | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1631
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is preparing for the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) scheduled in 2010. The NIC is comprised of several "tuning" physics sub-campaigns leading up to a demonstration of Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) ignition. Some of these experiments requires to use the NIF streak x-ray detector (SXD) to measure fuel capsule trajectory (shock timing) or x-ray "bang-time" from time-resolved x-ray imaging of the imploding capsule fuelled with pure tritium (T) instead of a deuterium-tritium (DT) mixture. The resulting prompt neutron fluence at the planned SXD location (~1.7 m from the target) would be ~ 1.4e9/cm2. Previous measurements suggest the onset of significant background at a neutron fluence of ~ 1e8/cm2 and the radiation damage and operational upsets which start at ~ 1e8 rad-Si/sec must be factored into an integrated experimental campaign plan. Monte Carlo analyses were performed to predict the neutron and gamma/x-ray fluences and radiation doses for the proposed diagnostic configuration. A possible shielding configuration is proposed to mitigate radiation effects. The primary component of this shielding is an 80 cm thickness of Polyethylene (PE) between target chamber center (TCC) and the SXD diagnostic. Additionally, 6-8 cm of PE around the detector reduces the large number of neutrons that scatter off the inside of the target chamber. This proposed shielding configuration reduces the high-energy neutron fluence at the SXD by approximately a factor of ~50.