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Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
Eitan Wacholder, Ezra Elias, Yoram Merlis
Nuclear Technology | Volume 110 | Number 2 | May 1995 | Pages 228-237
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35120
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An optimization artificial neural networks model is developed for solving the ill-posed inverse transport problem associated with localizing radioactive sources in a medium with known properties and dimensions. The model is based on the recurrent (or feedback) Hop-field network with fixed weights. The source distribution is determined based on the response of a limited number of external detectors of known spatial deployment in conjunction with a radiation transport model. The algorithm is tested and evaluated for a large number of simulated two-dimensional cases. Computations are carried out at different noise levels to account for statistical errors encountered in engineering applications. The sensitivity to noise is found to depend on the number of detectors and on their spatial deployment. A pretest empirical procedure is, therefore, suggested for determining an effective arrangement of detectors for a given problem.
