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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Jeffrey A. Favorite, Keith C. Bledsoe
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 152 | Number 1 | January 2006 | Pages 106-117
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE152-106
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Schwinger method for solving inverse gamma-ray transport problems was proposed in a previous paper. The method is iterative and requires a set of uncoupled forward and adjoint transport calculations in each iteration. In this paper, the Schwinger inverse method is applied to the problem of identifying an unknown material in a radiation shield by calculating its total macroscopic photon cross sections. The gamma source (its energy and spatial distribution as well as the composition of the material) is known and the total (angle-independent) gamma leakage is measured. In numerical one-dimensional spherical and slab test problems, the Schwinger inverse method successfully calculated the photon cross sections of an unknown material. Material identification was successfully achieved by comparing the calculated cross sections with those in a precomputed material cross-section library, although there was some ambiguity when realistic measurements were used. The Schwinger inverse method compared very favorably with the standard single-energy transmission technique.