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
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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
Jul 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
ARPA-E announces $40 million to develop transmutation technologies for UNF
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
E. C. Gomes, J. P. Duarte, P. F. Frutuoso e Melo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 194 | Number 1 | April 2016 | Pages 73-96
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-29
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The purpose of this paper is to highlight and model the most important steps in cases of human failure in radiotherapy (teletherapy and brachytherapy) procedures by identifying possible modes of human failure. An approach via Bayesian networks (BNs) to model and highlight the most relevant steps of teletherapy and brachytherapy was used. Finally, as a technique for the quantification of BNs, an expert opinion elicitation procedure was used since no database is available.
In the case of teletherapy, observing only the stages of prescription, planning, and execution, it appears that the step that most increases the success probability, after consideration of preventive measures, is execution. This is in agreement with cases of errors and accidents reported in the literature, considering that more than 50% of these cases are related to the implementation phase. Related to brachytherapy, the most relevant factor was the use of equipment, whose increase in success probability after consideration of preventive measures was 17.2%, demonstrating the importance of a continuous specific training.
It is important to mention that the purpose of this study was not to calculate the risk associated with radiotherapy treatments but rather to check how accident prevention influences the success procedure and observe the relationship among all stages. An uncertainty analysis was performed of the expert data by considering that data scattering followed a normal or a lognormal distribution, due to data ranges considered. This analysis revealed that data scattering was better represented by normal distributions, and the results are consistent with pointwise estimates initially made.