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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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
IAEA’s nuclear security center offers hands-on training
In the past year and a half, the International Atomic Energy Agency has established the Nuclear Security Training and Demonstration Center (NSTDC) to help countries strengthen their nuclear security regimes. The center, located at the IAEA’s Seibersdorf laboratories outside Vienna, Austria, has been operational since October 2023.
Bobbi Riedel, Christopher M. Perfetti, Forrest B. Brown
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 6 | June 2024 | Pages 1276-1287
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2249787
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The goal of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of different upper subcritical limit (USL) calculational methods for loosely coupled and novel neutronic systems. This study varied the separation distance over five center-to-center separation distance intervals for four loosely coupled models and explored seven single-system neutronic models. Each of these 27 systems was simulated using MCNP6.2 with 200 randomly perturbed, continuous-energy ENDF/B-VII.1 cross-section files that are in the TENDL 2019 library. The distribution of the values from these perturbed runs was used to calculate stochastic 99/99 USL values for each model iteration. USLs were also estimated for these 20 systems using the Whisper 1.1 code, and the Whisper-identified relevant benchmarks were used to further analyze the relationship between the region-wise USL calculation and the overall system USL calculations. Sensitivity data files were produced using MCNP6.2 and then used with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory TSURFER and USLSTATS methods to estimate USLs for a cross-method USL comparison. A windowing study was performed when using the USLSTATS method to determine the efficacy of the method using datasets with differing degrees of similarity to the given application case. The results show that USLs for each of the loosely coupled system models were higher USLs than the calculated stochastic USLs. The single-system uranium models also displayed a consistently lower stochastic USL as compared to the USL calculational methods, while the single-system plutonium models showed close agreement between the stochastic USLs and the other USL calculational methods.