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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
G. T. Chapman, W. R. Burrus
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 34 | Number 2 | November 1968 | Pages 169-180
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A19542
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements of the pulse-height distribution of gamma rays observed as a function of position and angle in the water shield of the Bulk Shielding Reactor II, a water-moderated and water-cooled pool-type reactor with stainless steel clad fuel plates, have been transformed to gamma-ray energy flux spectra by a computer program which removed the effects of the spectrometer's nonunique pulse-height response and accounted for the energy variation of the spectrometer's efficiency. The results show that the photons above 5 MeV originate primarily from thermal-neutron capture in the components of the stainless steel. Gamma rays due to the 57Fe component were identified as those known to be at 5.91, 6.02, and 7.6 MeV. Others were due to 58Fe at 10.16 MeV, to 54Cr at 8.88 and 9.72 MeV, and to 59Ni at 8.53 and 8.99 MeV. Below 5 MeV the spectra consist of a strong contribution at 2.2 MeV from thermal-neutron capture in the hydrogen of the pool water, combined with a continuum presumably composed of prompt and delayed gamma rays following fission, lower energy components in the capture spectra from the stainless steel, scattering in the reactor or shield, and other lesser sources.
