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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.
H. Alan Robitaille, John S. Hewitt
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 63 | Number 4 | August 1977 | Pages 391-400
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27056
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The spectrum of neutrons in thermal pseudo-equilibrium with a mixture of partially hydrogenated terphenyls and high-boiling polymers, an organic material known commercially as HB40, has been measured at room temperature. The spectrum was measured in each of seven mixtures of HB40 and a thermal-neutron absorber, trimethyl borate, in various concentrations. The spectra were determined by the time-of-flight method using the University of Toronto linear electron accelerator as a pulsed source of fast neutrons. These spectra were compared with those calculated using several different bound-hydrogen approximations to the actual energy transfer kernel for the mixture. Of these approximations, the best agreement between theory and experiment occurred for a scattering kernel derived using the diphenyl and the polyethylene scattering kernels, combined according to a weighting scheme reflecting the degree of hydrogenation of the organic material.