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Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
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Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Remembering Charles E. Till
Charles E. Till
Charles E. Till, an ANS member since 1963 and Fellow since 1987, passed away on March 22 at the age of 89. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Imperial College, University of London. Till initially worked for the Civilian Atomic Power Department of the Canadian General Electric Company, where he was the physicist in charge of the startup of the first prototype CANDU reactor in Canada.
Till joined Argonne National Laboratory in 1963 in the Applied Physics Division, where he worked as an experimentalist in the Fast Critical Experiments program. He then moved to additional positions of increasing responsibility, becoming division director in 1973. Under his leadership, the Applied Physics Division established itself as one of the elite reactor physics organizations in the world. Both the experimental (critical experiments and nuclear data measurements) and nuclear analysis methods work were internationally recognized. Till led Argonne’s participation in the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE), and he was the lead U.S. delegate to INFCE Working Group 5, Fast Breeders.
Adrienne L. Lehnert, Kimberlee J. Kearfott
Nuclear Technology | Volume 188 | Number 1 | October 2014 | Pages 97-111
Technical Paper | Radiation Measurements and General Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-125
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fast neutron interrogation for explosives detection has shown potential for the screening of sea-land cargo containers. Simulations were completed investigating the neutron scatter behavior of 14.1-MeV fast neutrons in such screening scenarios. Earlier efforts centered on Monte Carlo (MCNP5) simulations to identify flags or on specific calculations based on photons or neutrons produced as a result of fast neutron interaction that signal the presence of the explosive RDX (C2H6N6O6). Those simulations consisted of simplified target geometry; artificially collimated neutron source; and generalized organic, hydrogenous, or metallic types of cargo materials. In this study, the MCNP5 simulation was expanded to include a more accurate representation of the neutron source, target geometry, detector response, and realistic and varied container contents. The flags found using the earlier simulations were applied to the more realistic scenario models in order to determine the feasibility of the use of flags in a detection algorithm. Additional flags utilizing the simulated detector response were also investigated. The conditions under which specific flags were preferable were also examined. It was found that many flags performed well independent of the cargo type while others, such as those using only neutron backscatter, were more highly dependent on cargo type. Furthermore, many of the best-performing flags were those that did not require stringent neutron spectroscopy and would therefore be feasible with existing technology.