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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 8–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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My story: Stanley Levinson—ANS member since 1983
Levinson early in his career and today.
As a member of the American Nuclear Society, I have been to many conferences. The International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Analysis (PSA ’25), embedded in ANS Annual Meeting in Chicago in June, held special significance for me with the PSA ’25 opening plenary session recognizing the 50th anniversary of the publication of WASH-1400, which helped define my career. Reflecting on that milestone sent me back to 1975, when I was just an undergraduate student studying nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N.Y., focusing on my mechanics, fluids, and thermodynamic classes as well as my first set of nuclear engineering classes. At that time—and many times since—the question “Why nuclear engineering?” was raised.
G. Grosshög
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 42 | Number 1 | October 1970 | Pages 16-22
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A19322
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The stationary interaction parameter between the plane surfaces of two identical, cylindrical, polyethylene disks has been measured with the pulsed neutron method. It was shown that it is possible to overcome the delay effect caused by the flight of the neutrons in the gap between the moderators through the insertion of absorbers. In the measurements the ratio of separation distance to diameter was varied between 0.06 and 0.77; the resulting values of the interaction parameter varied from 0.93 to 0.24. Two different thicknesses of the disks were employed; one assembly gave decay constants from 10 000 to 17 000 sec−1 and the other assembly yielded values in the range 17 000 to 40 000 sec−1. Although full equilibrium of the neutron distribution was not reached in all cases for the last series, the two series show a general agreement. A calculation based on a zero'th-order Bessel function as radial distribution and (cos θ)/π as angular distribution of the neutrons leaving the interacting surfaces gives a too-large interaction parameter for all separation distances. However, the overestimate is small when the surfaces are close together.