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2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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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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AI at work: Southern Nuclear’s adoption of Copilot agents drives fleet forward
Southern Nuclear is leading the charge in artificial intelligence integration, with employee-developed applications driving efficiencies in maintenance, operations, safety, and performance.
The tools span all roles within the company, with thousands of documented uses throughout the fleet, including improved maintenance efficiency, risk awareness in maintenance activities, and better-informed decision-making. The data-intensive process of preparing for and executing maintenance operations is streamlined by leveraging AI to put the right information at the fingertips for maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, engineers, and technicians.
Adam Davis, Donald J. Dudziak, Drew E. Kornreich
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 178 | Number 1 | September 2014 | Pages 42-56
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-10
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Photon buildup factors provide a convenient method for radiation protection professionals to calculate dose and exposure behind various shielding configurations. Examination of buildup factors can also provide insight into the behavior of photons in these shields. Recent work has developed dual-layer buildup factors for several shielding configurations and a limited number of energies while slant-path buildup factors have been developed for single-layer shields. This work develops slant-path buildup factors for slab-geometric, dual-layer shields comprising polyethylene and lead at 25 energies conforming to the energies used in the buildup factor standard ANSI/ANS-6.4.3-1991 (W2001), “Gamma-Ray Attenuation Coefficients and Buildup Factors for Engineering Materials,” between 10 keV and 10 MeV. Further, the increased energy resolution of the calculations performed in this work allows the energy at which the previously identified “buildup reversal” phenomenon occurs to be more precisely identified. The effect of mesh spacing and quadrature resolution on fluence through the shields is also considered.