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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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.”
M. Scott McKinley, Alexis E. Schach von Wittenau
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 1 | October 2009 | Pages 245-248
Radiography | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (Part 1) / Radioisotopes | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9134
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
MERCURY is a modern, parallel, general-purpose Monte Carlo code being developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Recently, a radiographic capability has been added. MERCURY can create a source of diagnostic, virtual particles that are aimed at pixels in an image tally. This new feature is compared to the radiography code HADES for verification and timing. Comparisons for accuracy were made using the French Test Object and for timing were made by tracking through an unstructured mesh. In addition, self-consistency tests were run in MERCURY for the British Test Object and scattering test problem. MERCURY and HADES were found to agree to the precision of the input data. HADES appears to run around eight times faster than MERCURY in the timing study. Profiling the MERCURY code has turned up several differences in the algorithms that account for this. These differences will be addressed in a future release of MERCURY.
