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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
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
TerraPower begins U.K. regulatory approval process
Seattle-based TerraPower signaled its interest this week in building its Natrium small modular reactor in the United Kingdom, the company announced.
TerraPower sent a letter to the U.K.’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, formally establishing its intention to enter the U.K. generic design assessment (GDA) process. This is TerraPower’s first step in deployment of its Natrium technology—a 345-MW sodium fast reactor coupled with a molten salt energy storage unit—on the international stage.
Hiroki Sono, Hiroshi Yanagisawa, Akio Ohno, Takuji Kojima, Noboru Soramasu
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 139 | Number 2 | October 2001 | Pages 209-220
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2232
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To evaluate neutron and gamma-ray absorbed doses in human bodies at criticality accidents, two kinds of tissue-equivalent dosimeters, a polymer-alanine dosimeter and a thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD) made of 7Li211B4O7, were applied to dosimetry experiments with ~10% enriched uranyl nitrate solution at the Transient Experiment Critical Facility (TRACY) in the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. For the experiments, five transient operations were conducted to simulate criticality accidents by varying the conditions of reactivity addition. Very high doses from both neutrons and gamma rays were successfully measured in the range of 1.5 to 1600 Gy by using polymer-alanine dosimeters. The gamma-ray doses were able to be determined in the range of 1 to 900 Gy by using 7Li211B4O7 TLDs. In addition, it is confirmed that the doses are proportional to integrated power during transient operations although the conditions of reactivity addition are different. Since the sensitivity of 7Li211B4O7 to gamma rays is almost the same as that of alanine, the neutron doses are easily evaluated without any complicated correction by subtracting the gamma-ray doses obtained by the 7Li211B4O7 TLDs from the sum of neutron and gamma-ray doses by the polymer-alanine dosimeters. As a result of computational analyses by the MCNP4B code, it is also found that calculated doses agree with measured ones within 95% confidence intervals and the MCNP4B is applicable to the evaluation of neutron and gamma-ray absorbed doses during the transient.
