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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Ho Nieh nominated to the NRC
Nieh
President Trump recently nominated Ho Nieh for the role of commissioner in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission through the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029.
Nieh has been the vice president of regulatory affairs at Southern Nuclear since 2021, though he is currently working as a loaned executive at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, where he has been for more than a year.
Nieh’s experience: Nieh started his career at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, where he worked primarily as a nuclear plant engineer and contributed as a civilian instructor in the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Power Program.
From there, he joined the NRC in 1997 as a project engineer. In more than 19 years of service at the organization, he served in a variety of key leadership roles, including division director of Reactor Projects, division director of Inspection and Regional Support, and director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
Youssef Abouhussien, Gennady Miloshevsky
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 6 | June 2025 | Pages 1000-1009
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2399456
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A high-altitude nuclear detonation releases a significant portion of energy as X-rays with a blackbody spectrum. Satellites are particularly vulnerable to prompt soft X-rays (~1 keV) absorbed within a few microns of the surface of the solar array, causing melting and evaporation of its materials. The absorption of soft X-rays in solar cell materials is studied using GEANT4 computer software. Energy deposition as a function of depth (depth-dose profile) is calculated for slab geometries of dielectric and metallic materials. The photo-absorption and Compton scattering of X-rays and the contribution of secondary radiation, such as photo-electrons, Auger-electrons, and fluorescence photons are taken into account. The effect of the production of secondary radiation on the distribution of deposited dose in the near-surface region of materials is investigated. The results presented in this work are validated against published data and provide valuable insights into X-ray absorption by solar cell materials, the redistribution of energy by secondary radiation, and the spatial scale of power density deposition that can be used as a source term for the further thermomechanical analysis of a material’s phase transformations and melting.