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
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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
Feb 2025
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2025
Latest News
RP3C Community of Practice’s fifth anniversary
In February, the Community of Practice (CoP) webinar series, hosted by the American Nuclear Society Standards Board’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policies Committee (RP3C), celebrated its fifth anniversary. Like so many online events, these CoPs brought people together at a time when interacting with others became challenging in early 2020. Since the kickoff CoP, which highlighted the impact that systems engineering has on the design of NuScale’s small modular reactor, the last Friday of most months has featured a new speaker leading a discussion on the use of risk-informed, performance-based (RIPB) thinking in the nuclear industry. Providing a venue to convene for people within ANS and those who found their way online by another route, CoPs are an opportunity for the community to receive answers to their burning questions about the subject at hand. With 50–100 active online participants most months, the conversation is always lively, and knowledge flows freely.
Randall R. Nason*
Nuclear Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | November 1984 | Pages 333-340
Technical Paper | Technique | doi.org/10.13182/NT84-A33521
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The adjoint technique has been applied to accurately and economically predict the response of a portal monitor to photon emissions below ∼1.5 MeV, thus encompassing those sources generally of interest in nuclear safeguards applications. The adjoint source was defined as the product of the total attenuation coefficient and an experimentally determined efficiency factor, which accounts for the performance characteristics of the signal-processing system. The efficiency factor was determined from a combination of data obtained from a single NE-102 scintillator and results from corresponding three-dimensional forward MORSE calculations. A prototype walk-through portal was then fabricated with four identical NE-102 scintillators. Adjoint MORSE calculations were performed to obtain net count rates for various sources within this portal. These results were compared to experimental data and were found to agree to well within 10%. The photon response within the portal detection volume was then characterized by a series of MORSE calculations.
