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
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
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.”
H. Thiele, F.-M. Börst
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 867-870
Shielding | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (PART 3) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9320
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The purpose of this research was to make shielding benchmark calculations with the new Standardized Computer Analyses for Licensing Evaluation (SCALE) shielding sequence Monaco with Automated Variance Reduction Importance Calculations (MAVRIC) and compare with SCALE SAS4/MORSE calculations as well as dose rate measurements for the German storage/transport cask CASTOR® high active waste (HAW) 20/28 CG. MAVRIC with improved transport methodology is the successor of SAS4 and was released as part of SCALE version 6 in 2009. The new calculations with MAVRIC resolve discrepancies of results obtained with SAS4 in comparison to measured data. Cask areas with heterogeneous structures like trunnions and ducts are of special interest.Based on dose rate measurements for neutron and gamma radiation on a CASTOR® HAW 20/28 CG cask and to extend our own shielding calculations done with the SCALE SAS4/MORSE sequence, the new SCALE shielding sequence MAVRIC/Monaco has been used for comprehensive calculations to treat problematic cask shielding regions like trunnion areas and ducts in the cask lid.The calculations with the SAS4 sequence are carried out with SCALE v4.4a. The prerelease test version of the MAVRIC sequence was added to SCALE v5.1 for testing purposes. The dose rate measurements are carried out for a single CASTOR® HAW 20/28 CG cask in storage configuration. Loading plans are used for calculating the source strength and the spectra of the inventory.Calculations with the new MAVRIC sequence and the typical SCALE group shielding library consisting of 27 neutron and 18 gamma groups for points on the surface at the cask at midheight and in front of the trunnions show results that are closer to the measured dose rates than the SAS4 calculations.First dose rate calculations with the new SCALE shielding sequence MAVRIC are presented. They show a better agreement to the measured data than the SAS4 sequence, especially for more complex regions. The reason is the three-dimensional treatment of the variance-reduction parameters in the new MAVRIC sequence as opposed to the one-dimensional biasing treatment in SAS4.
