ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Owen Leslie Deutsch, Brian Winston Murray
Nuclear Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | July 1975 | Pages 320-339
Technical Paper | Radioisotope | doi.org/10.13182/NT75-A24433
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The pathology of malignant brain tumors often precludes successful treatment by surgery and standard radiation therapy. Boron neutron-capture therapy consists of the selective loading of tumor with 10B and subsequent irradiation with a thermal or epithermal neutron field. The neutron-capture reaction 10B(n,α)7Li produces high-linear-energy-transfer-charged particles that deposit energy principally within the abnormal tissue that contains a high 10B concentration. Constraints on this therapy modality are imposed by radiation effects in normal tissue from thermal neutrons, neutron-induced gamma rays, fast-neutron and gamma-ray beam contaminants, and also from the 10B(n,α)7Li reactions in circulating blood. The ANDY general geometry Monte Carlo code is used to calculate the space-energy distribution of all pertinent components of the dose within a simple head phantom in an idealized therapy configuration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Reactor. The effects of 10B concentration, gamma-ray contamination of the therapy beam, thermal neutron beam aperture, and surgically formed re-entrant cavities are examined with respect to several clinical criteria for therapeutic efficacy. It is found for the model considered that the maximum effective relaxation length for the thermal neutron fluence is 1.6 to 1.8 cm, which is 30 to 40% lower than the infinite medium relaxation length, and thereby indicates the importance of multidimensional boundary effects in this calculation. The fluence-depth characteristic was verified by an experimental irradiation of a tis-sue-equivalent head phantom with re-entrant cavityy and excellent agreement was observed between measured and calculated results. It was also found that the gamma-ray beam contaminant is not necessarily deleterious to therapeutic efficacy, that a larger aperture thermal neutron beam improves the dose field with respect to some criteria but at the expense of others, and that plausible size variations in the surgically formed cavity do not change the character of the dose field. As a further refinementy a Monte Carlo microdosimetry model is developed and applied to the problem of radiation effects on the cerebral microvasculature by 10B capture reactions in the circulating blood. Qualitative predictions of this model correlate positively with previous clinical experience.
