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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Chen Fu, Peng Xu, Yonggang Huo, Sufen Li, Xingfu Cai
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 9 | September 2022 | Pages 1114-1124
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2052551
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For the problem of searching radioactive sources in a certain area, a search method combining Tsallis divergence strategy with a particle filtering algorithm is proposed. The method this paper proposes for searching for radioactive sources is carried out by using a mobile platform equipped with a NaI(Tl) scintillator detector. The estimation model of the parameters of the radioactive source is constructed and is based on the inverse square law and the fact that the count values of the NaI(Tl) detector in nuclear decay processes obeys the Poisson distribution. The Tsallis divergence strategy is used as a reward function to control the movement of the platform. The posterior distribution of the parameters of the radioactive source is continuously and iteratively updated by using the particle filtering algorithm. The results of Monte Carlo simulations and practical experiments verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.
