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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
INL makes a case for eliminating ALARA and setting higher dose limits
A report just released by Idaho National Laboratory reviews decades of radiation protection standards and research on the health effects of low-dose radiation and recommends that the current U.S. annual occupational dose limit of 5,000 mrem be maintained without applying ALARA—the “as low as reasonably achievable” regulatory concept first introduced in 1971—below that threshold.
Noting that epidemiological studies “have consistently failed to demonstrate statistically significant health effects at doses below 10,000 mrem delivered at low dose rates,” the report also recommends “future consideration of increasing this limit to 10,000 mrem/year with appropriate cumulative-dose constraints.”
Mahmoud Z. Youssef, Russell Feder
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 571-581
Nuclear Systems: Analysis and Experiments | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 2) Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST64-571
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The upper, equatorial, and lower diagnostics port plugs in ITER will include numerous intermingling labyrinths and many streaming paths whose impact should be carefully studied. For this purpose, the 3-D Discrete Ordinates code, Attila, has been routinely used by PPPL/UCLA to assess the nuclear field in these geometrically complex plugs both during operation and after shutdown. In this paper we describe the calculation procedure followed and the input parameters/assumptions applied to assess the shutdown dose rates (SDDR) everywhere with emphasize on their values inside the generic equatorial port plug (GEPP) and its inter-space extension area. Factors inherent in the Discrete Ordinates method that impact the accuracy of the results (e.g. quadrature sets used, boundary conditions applied, etc.) are discussed. Means to minimize streaming through straight gaps and open channels present in the GEPP are presented in this paper, along with an examination of their effectiveness in reducing the SDDR in the port inter-space area.
