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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.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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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.”
Jeng-Ning Wang, Chung-Hsin Lu, Kuo-Wei Lee, Uei-Tyng Lin, Shiang-Huei Jiang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 1 | October 2009 | Pages 101-107
Dose/Dose Rate | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (Part 1) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9107
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The site dose rate of a spent-fuel storage facility to the populace is a major concern in a radiation protection project. Shielding analysis of the facility must be performed to ensure that the nearby dose rates are within regulation limitations. The purpose of this study was to simulate an independent spent-fuel storage installation (ISFSI) storage facility with different methods and different conditions for validation and analysis. The discrete ordinates code DORT and the SKYSHINE III code were used for the cask surface flux estimation and the site dose rate calculation, respectively. The Monte Carlo code MCNP was also utilized to estimate the surface dose rate and site dose rate by its subsequent calculation. Various cask decay heats (23, 14, and 7 kW/cask) were considered as the source conditions. A facility layout composed of 30 casks was also simulated by the MCNP code and analyzed for the cask self-shielding effect to a certain detecting point. For a single storage cask, comparisons of the site dose rates calculated by different methods were carried out at variant distances. For the layout simulation, the calculated results indicated that the self-shielding effect could be roughly classified into several groups according to the location of the storage cask, and a factor could be assigned to each group. These classified factors might help to infer the site dose in variant layout designs. The site dose rates calculated by different codes were compared for the whole facility, too. In spite of the similar dose rates on the cask surface, the difference of site dose rates changes with decay heat. The layout study of the ISFSI facility could offer information to make the site dose estimation more efficient as many layout assessments are needed.
