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Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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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Countering the nuclear workforce shortage narrative
James Chamberlain, director of the Nuclear, Utilities, and Energy Sector at Rullion, has declared that the nuclear industry will not have workforce challenges going forward. “It’s time to challenge the scarcity narrative,” he wrote in a recent online article. “Nuclear isn't short of talent; it’s short of imagination in how it attracts, trains, and supports the workforce of the future.”
V. V. Verbinski, C. G. Cassapakis, W. K. Hagan, G. L. Simmons
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 75 | Number 2 | August 1980 | Pages 159-166
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE80-A21305
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The importance of gamma-ray reactions [(γ,f), (γ,γ′), and (γ,n)] that can interfere with the detection of certain threshold neutron reactions [(n,f), (n,n′), and (n,2n)] used in reactor pressure vessel dosimetry was studied via a combined experimental and calculational program. First, an experiment-design calculation of such photocontamination was carried out in a pool-type reactor, indicating ∼0.1% photointerference at the reactor surface and ∼10 000% at 1-m penetration of water (∼1% neutron attenuation/mm). Next, a complete set of threshold activation foils was irradiated fore and aft of a “photofraction gauge,” a tungsten disk that attenuated the important 5- to 10-MeV gamma rays by a factor of ∼30 and the >0.5-MeV neutrons by a factor of ∼3. The photofraction gauge was calibrated for photofraction fγ, by comparing the large fore to aft activation ratios [R(F/A)] for photocontamination foils with R(F/A) ≃ 3 for noncontamination foils [such as 58Ni(n,p) and 27Al(n,α)]. The values of fγ were calculated and were found to agree reasonably well with those measured, except that the calculated values were a bit too high. The one-dimensional calculation needs to be replaced with an accurate three-dimensional calculation with measured power distribution before accurate (γ,f) and (γ,γ′) cross-section adjustments can be made for the activation foils and/or the gamma-ray production cross sections (from n,γ reactions near the reactor) properly modified. Some one-dimensional cylindrical calculations for pressurized and boiling water reactors are presented that predict up to 55% photocontamination at the pressure vessel wall when determined by the 232Th(n,f) reaction.