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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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What’s in your Dubai chocolate? Nuclear scientists test pistachios for toxins
For the uninitiated, Dubai chocolate is a candy bar filled with pistachio and tahini cream and crispy pastry recently popularized by social media influencers. While it’s easy to dismiss as a viral craze now past its peak, the nutty green confection has spiked global pistachio demand, and growers and processors are ramping up production. That means more pistachios need to be tested for aflatoxins—a byproduct of a common crop mold.
Jerome L. Shapiro
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 12 | Number 4 | April 1962 | Pages 449-456
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE62-A26090
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An experimental and analytical study of the void coefficient of reactivity in the Ford Nuclear Reactor (a fully enriched, swimming pool type) has been completed. A stream of air bubbles was used to introduce voids. Out-of-pile calibration of the air flow system was necessary to account for variation in bubble rise velocity with average air concentration. This method is extremely simple except for the calibration procedure. With the results presented in this paper, the void coefficients of other reactors with similar fuel elements (18 plate, BSR type) can be measured without the necessity for recalibration. For the calculation of uniformly distributed void coefficients, relatively simple two-group diffusion theory is shown to be accurate provided the variation of leakage in all three dimensions is taken into account. This variation of leakage is computed by the use of a buckling iterative procedure. Second order effects, such as the variation of effective thermal neutron temperature and disadvantage factor, may be neglected. For the calculation of localized void effects, the buckling iteration method is inaccurate due to the nonseparability of axial and radial flux distribution in this small core. To improve the accuracy an extension of this method to several region iteration is suggested. The principal value of this type of calculation is the short computer time required.