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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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No impact from Savannah River radioactive wasps
The news is abuzz with recent news stories about four radioactive wasp nests found at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The site has been undergoing cleanup operations since the 1990s related to the production of plutonium and tritium for defense purposes during the Cold War. Cleanup activities are expected to continue into the 2060s.
D. G. Cacuci, J.J. Wagschal, A. Yaari
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 81 | Number 3 | July 1982 | Pages 443-450
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE82-A20285
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The concept of a leakage importance function is introduced and analyzed for physical systems governed by the Boltzmann transport equation. The homogeneous equation with inhomogeneous boundary conditions satisfied by the importance function is derived by using adjoint operators. A standard discrete ordinates transport code is used to solve this equation, and some important numerical aspects are highlighted. Idealized nuclear systems are analyzed to illustrate that the leakage importance function gives a measure of the relative importance of each source particle in phase space in contributing to the leakage, and that the leakage importance function provides insight regarding the specific physical process that leads to leakage.