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Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Latest News
G7 pledges support for nuclear at Italy meeting
The Group of Seven (G7) recommitted its support for nuclear energy in the countries that opt to use it at a Ministerial Meeting on Climate in Italy last month.
In a statement following the April meeting, the group committed to support multilateral efforts to strengthen the resilience of nuclear supply chains, referencing the goal set by 25 countries during last year’s COP28 climate conference in Dubai to triple global nuclear generating capacity by 2050.
Brock Jolicoeur, Norbert Hugger, David Medich
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 11 | November 2023 | Pages 1819-1825
Regular Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2204988
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We investigate the image quality and beam intensity of thermal neutron radiography after replacing a standard single-channel neutron collimator with a compact array of microcollimators. In this study, the MCNP6 Monte Carlo computer code was used to simulate a 2 × 2-cm-area isotropic thermal neutron source, which then was collimated by an array of micron-sized neutron collimators that measured 29.8 μm in diameter and with lengths that varied from 0.6 to 3 mm. These microcollimators were spaced 30 μm apart and assembled into a 2 × 2-cm array.
The image quality of the neutron beams produced by the resulting collimator arrays was assessed by imaging the edge of a very thin (~0.01-mm) gadolinium foil to obtain the image Modulation Transfer Function (MTF). The MCNP6 resulting flux map from each simulation then was converted into a grayscale .tiff image and the image’s resulting MTF obtained using the ImageJ computer program with the imaging beam geometric unsharpness, which is a limiting factor in the image resolution determined at the 10% value of the MTF curve.
In this study, we found that a 2 × 2× 0.298-cm microcollimator, corresponding to a length-to–hole diameter ratio of 100:1 and a collimator length of 2.98 mm produced a beam with a geometric unsharpness of 32 μm. Compared to a standard single-channel collimator with a 2 × 2-cm aperture, the single-channel collimator would need to be 660 cm long to produce an equivalent geometric sharpness. Yet because of its shorter length, the imaging beam intensity from our 2.98-mm-thick collimator array was approximately 50 times greater than that of an equivalent single-channel collimator.