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NRC proposes changes to its rules on nuclear materials
In response to Executive Order 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” the NRC is proposing sweeping changes to its rules governing the use of nuclear materials that are widely used in industry, medicine, and research. The changes would amend NRC regulations for the licensing of nuclear byproduct material, some source material, and some special nuclear material.
As published in the May 18 Federal Register, the NRC is seeking public comment on this proposed rule and draft interim guidance until July 2.
R. J. Sheu, A. Y. Chen, Y.-W. H. Liu, S. H. Jiang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 159 | Number 1 | May 2008 | Pages 23-36
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE159-23
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this study, discrete ordinates and Monte Carlo methods were applied to solve the radiation transport problem for a simplified spent fuel storage cask considering fixed neutron and gamma-ray sources. The results were compared, and the causes for their differences were investigated. In addition, a hybrid method based on the Consistent Adjoint Driven Importance Sampling (CADIS) methodology has been adopted to accelerate the Monte Carlo simulations. CADIS utilizes a deterministic adjoint function for variance reduction through source biasing and consistent transport biasing. The problem encountered and its possible solution for applying the source biasing in such a large volume source are described. Compared with the unbiased case, the computational efficiency is improved by a factor of several tens for neutron transport, and the efficiency is increased tremendously by about five orders of magnitude for gamma-ray transport. It has been demonstrated that the biasing scheme applied here is very effective in the shielding calculations for a spent fuel storage cask using the Monte Carlo method.