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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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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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
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.”
Ronald J. Ellis, Juergen Rapp
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 4 | November 2015 | Pages 750-757
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-909
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plasma-material interaction is a major concern in fusion reactor design and analysis. The Material Plasma Exposure eXperiment (MPEX) will explore plasma-material interaction under fusion reactor plasma conditions. Samples with accumulated displacement damage (characterized by displacements per atom) produced by fast neutron irradiations in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will be studied in the MPEX facility. This paper presents assessments of the calculated induced radioactivity and resulting radiation dose rates of a variety of potential fusion reactor plasma-facing materials, e.g., tungsten. The scientific code packages Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) and Standardized Computer Analyses for Licensing Evaluation (SCALE) were used to simulate irradiation of the samples in HFIR. This included the generation and depletion of nuclides in the material and the subsequent composition, activity levels, gamma radiation fields, and resultant dose rates as a function of cooling time. A challenge of the MPEX project is to minimize the radioactive inventory in the preparation of the samples and the sample dose rates for inclusion in the MPEX facility.