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Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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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
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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
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.
H. Huang, S. A. Eddinger, R. B. Stephens, A. Nikroo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 4 | May 2009 | Pages 380-388
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST55-380
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities are caused by features that affect shock velocity. These features can be statistically measured by radiography. We designed a precision radiography (PR) system that measures X-ray opacity variations in National Ignition Facility (NIF) ablator capsules to 10-4. Quantitative interpretation of the PR data is challenging and is the subject of this paper. The PR opacity power spectrum (PS) must be related to the NIF surface PS requirements (commonly known as the "NIF curves"). This relationship must be calculated for each specific shell. The compounding factors include X-ray spectra and spot size, detector resolution, shell diameter, coating thickness, dopant and impurity levels, and the coherency status of interface roughness between different layers. In this work, we developed a useful tool to quickly compute the NIF opacity curve (more precisely referred to as NIF "OD [optical depth] PS reference curve" in this paper) for any partially coated NIF shells or nonstandard developmental shells. This allows more rapid feedback on the quality of shells using only partially coated shells and enables benchmarking between the opacity (measured by a radiographic instrument) and surface roughness (measured by an atomic force microscope).