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Casting a wider net
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
Recently, a colleague related to me a conversation overheard at an industry forum in which ANS was referred to as a group of “academics” who were of limited use in expanding the workforce needed to deliver a nuclear resurgence.
While not new, this criticism still gets me hypertensive when I hear it. Many still see ANS as a bunch of academics and “labbies” disconnected from the day-to-day commercial nuclear race.
Yet, I also understand the charge is not entirely without foundation. Pop your head into a technical session at an ANS national conference, and you’re bound to hear academics presenting research that, to nontechnical ears, sounds esoteric.
Stephen C. Wilson, Scott W. Mosher, Katherine E. Royston, Charles R. Daily, Ahmad M. Ibrahim
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 74 | Number 4 | November 2018 | Pages 288-302
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1483687
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fusion energy systems present increasingly significant computational challenges as they grow in size and complexity. Once constructed, ITER will be a full-size nuclear facility with highly complicated structures and support systems, with an array of scientific equipment in close proximity to the neutron-emitting deuterium-tritium plasma. Characterization of shutdown dose rate (SDDR) distributions caused by the neutron activation of these structures is important to the final design and full-power operation of the device. This work summarizes the theoretical basis and parallel implementation of the Multi-Step Consistent Adjoint-Driven Importance Sampling (MS-CADIS) method designed specifically for highly efficient execution of multistep activation problems. Fusion SDDR benchmark problems have been solved with these new tools, and the results have been compared to experimental and other computational results to establish their validation basis.