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
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo
August 8–11, 2021
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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
Jul 2021
Jan 2021
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2021
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Metz on Harold Denton: Memories of a life in nuclear safety
Metz
A number of years ago, historian and writer Chuck Metz Jr. was at the Bush’s Visitor Center in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains when he ran into former Nuclear Regulatory Commission official Harold Denton and his wife. Metz was at the visitor center, which opened in 2010 and is now a tourist hotspot, because, as he explained to the Dentons at the time, he had overseen the development of its on-site museum and had written a companion coffee-table history book.
The chance meeting turned into a friendship and a fruitful collaboration. Denton, who in 1979 was the public spokesperson for the NRC as the Three Mile Island-2 accident unfolded, had been working on his memoir, but he was stuck. He asked Metz for help with the organization and compilation of his notes. “I was about to retire,” Metz said, “but I thought that exploring the nuclear world might be an interesting change of pace.”
Denton passed away in 2017, but by then Metz had spent many hours with his fast friend and was able to complete the memoir, Three Mile Island and Beyond: Memories of a Life in Nuclear Safety, which was published recently by ANS. Metz shared some of his thoughts about Denton and the book with Nuclear News. The interview was conducted by NN’s David Strutz.
PHITS is a general-purpose Monte Carlo particle transport simulation code developed under collaboration between Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), Research Organization for Information Science and Technology (RIST), and several institutes all over the world. It can deal with the transport of nearly all particles over wide energy ranges, using several nuclear reaction models and nuclear data libraries. PHITS can support your researches in the fields of accelerator technology, radiotherapy, space radiation, and in many other fields which are related to particle and heavy ion transport phenomena. See PHITS website in more detail. (http://phits.jaea.go.jp)
If you would like to attend the course, you have to obtain the license of the latest version of PHITS. It is free of charge, and the instruction to get the license is given below (https://phits.jaea.go.jp/howtoget.html). When you submit the application form via PHITS website, please select “Submission of application form” in the contact page of PHITS website, and write “I would like to attend PHITS course in ICRS-14/RPSD-202, Sept 2020” in the message body.
Attendees must bring a laptop PC with either Windows or Mac OS. This tutorial course is intended for researchers who are familiar with Monte Carlo particle transport simulation. Attendees will learn the basic usage of PHITS, highlighting difference between the input formats of PHITS and other codes.
This workshop will revisit several of the MCNP6.2 new features and tools as well as a sneak preview of many of the new features and improvements included in the upcoming MCNP6.3 code release that are most relevant to the nuclear radiation protection and shielding communities. While the finer details of the workshop will be forthcoming, a few of the topics to expect at this workshop include:
Participants will be provided with workshop slides, examples and any corresponding documentation. Instructors will be available to discuss participant questions regarding the workshop materials and their specific application needs.
Attila4MC provides a graphical user interface for MCNP 6.2, allowing users to setup, run, and visualize MCNP solutions from CAD data. Attila4MC employs the Attila deterministic solver to generate weight windows variance reduction using the CADIS and FW-CADIS methods. This is a hands-on workshop, where attendees will setup, run, and visualize a deep penetration shielding model starting with a CAD model. Both the CADIS and FW-CADIS variance reduction models will be employed. Attendees wishing to run Attila4MC should bring a Windows 7 or 10 laptop, with at least 6 GB of RAM. Attendees wishing to also run MCNP must also have MCNP 6.2.0 installed.
Shift is Oak Ridge National Laboratory's flagship Monte Carlo (MC) radiation transport code, designed to scale from laptops to leadership-class supercomputers. As a general purpose MC code widely used for fission, fusion, and national security applications, Shift supports a variety of geometry representations, physics engines, and tally types. Shift will be available as a user-facing tool in the SCALE 6.3 release in late 2020.This workshop will cover the basic usage of Shift for fixed-source shielding problems. Attendees will first be guided through input file setup, code execution, and output interpretation. Two realistic use cases will then be explored in detail. The first will involve using hybrid MC/deterministic transport capabilities (i.e., CADIS/FW-CADIS) for a multi-detector shielding problem. The second will be an SMR excore problem, where Shift is first run in eigenvalue mode to obtain a converged fission source for fixed-source transport.The workshop will conclude with an interactive exercise where attendees can practice using Shift and ask questions as they arise. For this exercise, attendees will be provided with a VirtualBox appliance file with Shift pre-installed. Attendees should bring a laptop and also apply in advance for a license for the SCALE software package (version 6.2 is fine) from RSICC (https://www.ornl.gov/onramp/rsicc).
Information Coming Soon!
The first radiation therapy treatment was in 1893, and since then, x-rays have been the standard of care in radiation oncology. Recently, there has been massive growth in proton therapy centers in the US and worldwide, due to the reduced risk of side effects and secondary malignancies offered by proton therapy compared to x-rays. These benefits come with unique challenges, including larger and more expensive delivery equipment, uncertainties in treatment delivery, and sensitivity to anatomical changes. In order to treat cancer safely and effectively, protons travel a journey through a cyclotron, magnetic beam line, a 3-story rotating gantry, powerful scanning magnets, a brass aperture, and finally, the patient. Throughout this journey, Radiation Oncologists, Medical Dosimetrists, Medical Physicists, and Radiation Therapists are developing the necessary treatment plans to guide the protons into the tumor and away from healthy organs. We are just starting to glimpse the future of proton therapy and it is very positive.
RayXpert is a 3D modeling software associated to a Monte Carlo calculation code for the Nuclear and Medical fields. Our Monte Carlo code is based on GEANT4, but totally re-developed by our company TRAD Tests & Radiations since 2000s.Thanks to the different tools RayXpert offer you, you will be able to optimize the design of your shielding with 3D mapping and scripting functionalities.If you are provided with the CAD files corresponding to your electron beams for example, this will even easier to model your case since RayXpert can import directly CAD file (STEP format) so that you don't have to re-model everything.You will also be able to compute the dose rate and deposited dose in terms of Gy in the different shapes you are interested in, or in terms of Sv (H*(10) definition or other dosimetric factor) for radioprotection purposes. And the system allows you to launch your calculation on your Linux or Windows cluster of computers with the distributed computation module.Finally, the software is validated comparing to MCNPX, for Gamma and Beta energies from 1 keV to 100 MeV, and for Neutron from 10^-11 MeV to 20MeV, and it is used worldwide (including US) by more than 40 companies.During the workshop we will present you the main functionalities of RayXpert through a real case study: the design of our own bunkers in which we have a Co60 and an electron beam source. From the design of the building to the shielding design of our home-made electron generator.Participant will be provided with the software at the beginning of the workshop that we will install in live on your computers, and let you use the 3D model we will work on to setting up the sources and materials, launch calculations and optimize the shielding.Presentation performed by a Nuclear Physicist from TRAD Tests & Radiations.
The FLUKA (http://fluka.cern) code is a general purpose Monte Carlo code simulating the interaction and transport of hadrons, leptons, photons and nuclei from keV energies (with the exception of neutrons, tracked down to thermal energies) to cosmic ray energies in any material and in complex geometries.
FLUKA is used for a wide range of applications, spanning from accelerator design and shielding, radiation protection, particle and cosmic ray physics, dosimetry, detector simulation to particle therapy. The workshop will provide a general overview of the code along with an interactive demonstration of its capabilities and a few hands on exercises. It will offer also the opportunity to the participants to come in contact with the developers and discuss their applications.
The participants are required to have downloaded and installed beforehand on their laptops, the FLUKA code together with its graphical user interface http://cern.ch/flair to fully benefit from the tutorial.
The code is available free of charge from http://fluka.cern
Last modified January 7, 2021, 2:42pm EST
