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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
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
TerraPower begins U.K. regulatory approval process
Seattle-based TerraPower signaled its interest this week in building its Natrium small modular reactor in the United Kingdom, the company announced.
TerraPower sent a letter to the U.K.’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, formally establishing its intention to enter the U.K. generic design assessment (GDA) process. This is TerraPower’s first step in deployment of its Natrium technology—a 345-MW sodium fast reactor coupled with a molten salt energy storage unit—on the international stage.
J. J. Sapyta, G. L. Simmons
Nuclear Technology | Volume 26 | Number 4 | August 1975 | Pages 508-515
Technical Paper | Shielding | doi.org/10.13182/NT75-A24451
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Sn discrete ordinates technique is used as a versatile design tool for a number of pressurized water reactor (PWR) shield design problems. This technique has been used for calculation of maximum neutron fluence at the inside wall of a reactor vessel, neutron flux distributions in steam, generators, and neutron and gamma-ray distributions at the outer surface of a reactor vessel. For vessel fluence calculations, comparisons of one-dimensional Sn and removal diffusion techniques with experiment show that the latter technique predicts higher fluences for typical PWR shield configurations. Studies of the effects of the one-dimensional approximation and different fuel management schemes show significant effects on the predicted fluence. The one-dimensional approximation gives a 20% higher fluence than the two-dimensional approximation, and the fluence can vary by as much as a factor of 2 with the type of fuel management scheme studied. Two-dimensional discrete ordinates techniques are used to determine neutron flux distributions in the energy range from 10 to 15 MeV in a steam generator that will be used for maritime reactor applications. These neutron distributions are used to calculate the source of 16N in the secondary system of the plant.