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Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Latest News
First astatine-labeled compound shipped in the U.S.
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
Taro Ueki, Forrest B. Brown, D. Kent Parsons, Drew E. Kornreich
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 145 | Number 3 | November 2003 | Pages 279-290
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE03-04
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The cycle-to-cycle correlation (autocorrelation) in Monte Carlo criticality calculations is analyzed concerning the dominance ratio of fission kernels. The mathematical analysis focuses on how the eigenfunctions of a fission kernel decay if operated on by the cycle-to-cycle error propagation operator of the Monte Carlo stationary source distribution. The analytical results obtained can be summarized as follows: When the dominance ratio of a fission kernel is close to unity, autocorrelation of the k-effective tallies is weak and may be negligible, while the autocorrelation of the source distribution is strong and decays slowly. The practical implication is that when one analyzes a critical reactor with a large dominance ratio by Monte Carlo methods, the confidence interval estimation of the fission rate and other quantities at individual locations must account for the strong autocorrelation. Numerical results are presented for sample problems with a dominance ratio of 0.85-0.99, where Shannon and relative entropies are utilized to exclude the influence of initial nonstationarity.