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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
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Strong performances across the board
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Another year, another stellar performance by America’s nuclear plants. We’ve come to expect high capacity factors, and it’s a credit to the men and women of the profession. They’ve made routine something that was unimaginable not so long ago.
The decadal challenge for the nuclear enterprise now is to maintain this high level of operational excellence for the current fleet, while at the same time ushering in a new generation of technologies at scale. It will be a big job—but one that seems more and more likely with each passing day.
J. P. Lestone, M. D. Rosen, P. Adsley
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 1 | December 2021 | Pages S352-S355
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1909372
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During the Manhattan Project, a simple formula was developed by Bethe and Feynman in 1943 to estimate the yield of a fission-only nuclear explosion of a uniformly dense bare sphere of supercritical fissile material. We have not found any evidence that Bethe and Feynman knew of the first yield formula obtained by Frisch and Peierls contained within their famous March 1940 memorandum. Similarly, we have not found any technical documents that compare the Bethe-Feynman formula to the earlier works of Frisch and Peierls or Serber. After adjusting for differences in the labeling of critical radii, we find that earlier formulas only differ by a scaling factor.