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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
S. Oliver, S. Morató, B. Juste, R. Miró, G. Verdú, N. Tejedor, J. Pérez-Calatayud
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 2 | February 2024 | Pages 264-273
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2192312
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High-energy radiotherapy treatments of a medical Linear Accelerator (LinAc) generate secondary neutrons that can produce health damage on the human body as the induction of secondary cancers. The energy spectrum of these neutrons must be determined to estimate the extra dose received by patients inside a radiotherapy room during radiotherapy treatment. To quantify the neutron production, a Ludlum Bonner sphere spectrometer (BSS) is used for measurement at different points of a LinAc bunker at the Hospital Universitari i Politècnic La Fe de València. With the neutron measured data and a set of response detector curves obtained by Monte Carlo simulations with MCNP6.1.1, the Maximum Likelihood Expectation Maximization unfolding method is used to unfold the energy neutron spectrum. Unfolded neutron spectra at different locations were compared to those obtained by Monte Carlo simulation of the same setup, showing the same energetic behavior. The fluence rate decreases with source distance, and the shape changes from a fast neutron peak in the nearest LinAc head location to a prominent thermal neutron peak in the bunker maze region. Moreover, the neutron ambient equivalent dose was obtained from the unfolded spectra and compared to Berthold detector measurements, being consistent.