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Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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!
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Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Brian C. Franke, Anil K. Prinja
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 149 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 1-22
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE05-A2473
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present a computationally efficient single event Monte Carlo approach for calculating dose from electrons. Analog elastic scattering and inelastic energy-loss differential cross sections for electrons are converted into corresponding discrete cross sections that are constrained to exactly preserve low-order moments of the analog cross sections. While the method has been implemented and tested for the Rutherford model for scattering and energy loss, its dependence solely on cross-section moments makes our approach arbitrarily general.By comparison with analog Monte Carlo calculations, we demonstrate that few discrete angles and energies are required to achieve accurate dose distributions, and the calculations are fast. The method is capable of yielding accurate results across the entire spatial extent of the transport problem, from relatively isotropic scattering to highly forward-peaked scattering. We compare the accuracy of the angular approximation with the Goudsmit-Saunderson angular approximation commonly used by condensed history methods and similarly analyze the energy approximation. Finally, we present an investigation of the combined approximations and illustrate the accuracy of this method in the presence of a material interface. The computational efficiency of each method is explicitly compared using timing studies.