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Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Muneerah A. Al-Aqeel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 4 | April 2025 | Pages 742-754
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2355405
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In modern life, cement products have become an essential material for the foundations in many structural building designs. Because of this, the natural effects of this material need to be tested and cannot be ignored. Modeling interactions of gamma rays with several cementitious compounds is the focus of this study. Gamma radiations exist naturally and artificially, but with limited gamma-ray energies, which are not easy to access for experimental gamma attenuation studies. So in the current work, a wide range of low gamma-ray energies (0.01 to 0.356 MeV) are applied to investigate the gamma radiation attenuation properties theoretically for different cement materials. Also, the Monte Carlo statistical method is applied using the Geant4 toolkit to simulate the results.
The outcomes are compared with theoretical values using XCOM to validate at these energies. The effective atomic number (), electron density (), and half-value layers (HVLs) for the studied samples are computed based on the simulated mass attenuation coefficient (), as expected. The outcomes show good agreement between the simulated results with those calculated theoretically by XCOM within an 11% deviation.
The silica fume sample showed a slightly higher value compared with the other samples. The dependence of the photon energy and cement composition on the values of the and HVLs are investigated and discussed. In addition, the values of and for all cement samples behaved similarly in the given photon energy range, and they decreased as the photon energy increased.
