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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.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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College students help develop waste-measuring device at Hanford
A partnership between Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) and Washington State University has resulted in the development of a device to measure radioactive and chemical tank waste at the Hanford Site. WRPS is the contractor at Hanford for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
Jan Peter Hessling
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 184 | Number 3 | November 2016 | Pages 388-399
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE16-8
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For evaluation of the uncertainty of nuclear power calculations, the Wilks approach has the appearance of an ideal tool. A conservatively estimated bound is obtained as the r’th most extreme model result, of a random sample of size determined by r. The methodology is noninvasive and simple and seems efficient and adequate. However, as this paper shows, these attributes come with a high price of large bias and substantial sampling variance. This jeopardizes its utilization as well as lowers its credibility and perceived efficiency. The unfortunate combination of random sampling and faithful estimation may result in a relative sampling uncertainty of the estimated bound(s) of no less than 100%. What is defined as credibility, i.e., the probability that the estimated bound is conservative relative to the true result, is well below the confidence relating the targeted bound(s) to the true result, which for the default application of the Wilks method translates into an expected failure rate of up to 10% (instead of 5%) of estimated bounds. To compensate for this deficit in credibility compared to the chosen level of confidence, adjustments of current practice are proposed. The application to modeling uncertainty is to be clearly distinguished from the original experimental sampling problem addressed by Wilks. Here, more is known but not utilized. A viable novel alternative based on so-called deterministic sampling with higher accuracy, precision, and efficiency will therefore be briefly discussed and illustrated.