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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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
Jan 2025
Jul 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2025
Nuclear Technology
January 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
NRC issues subsequent license renewal to Monticello plant
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed for a second time the operating license for Unit 1 of Minnesota’s Monticello nuclear power plant.
Ahmad K. Al-Basheer, Glenn E. Sjoden, Monica Ghita
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 906-918
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 3) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9326
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For low-energy photons, charged-particle equilibrium usually exists within the patient treatment volume, in which case the photon absorbed dose D is equal to the collisional kerma Kc; however, this is not true for the dose buildup region near the surface of the patient or at interfaces of dissimilar materials, such as tissue/lung, where corrections for secondary electron transport may be significant. This is readily treated in Monte Carlo codes, yet difficult to treat explicitly in deterministic codes due to the large optical thicknesses and added numerical complexities in reaching convergence in photon-electron transport problems. To properly treat three-dimensional electron transport physics deterministically, yet still achieve reasonably fast and accurate whole-body computation times using high-energy photons, angular-energy-dependent transport "electron dose kernels" (EDK-SN) have been developed. These kernels were derived via full physics Monte Carlo electron transport simulations and are applied using scaling based on rapid deterministic photon solutions over the problem phase-space, thereby accounting for the dose from charged-particle electron transport. As a result, accurate whole-body doses may be rapidly achieved for high-energy photon sources by performing a single deterministic SN multigroup photon calculation on a parallel cluster with PENTRAN, then linking the SN-derived photon fluxes and net currents to Monte Carlo-based EDKs to account for a full physics dose. Water phantom results using a uniform 0- to 8-MeV step uniform beam indicate that the dose can be accurately obtained within the uncertainty of a full physics Monte Carlo simulation. Followup work will implement this method on phantoms.