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Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Standards Program
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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Latest News
The progress so far: An update on the Reactor Pilot Program
It has been about three months since the Department of Energy named 10 companies for its new Reactor Pilot Program, which maps out how the DOE would meet the goal announced by executive order in May of having three reactors achieve criticality by July 4, 2026.
Zhanpeng Huang, Yunki Jo, Qingming He, Liangzhi Cao, Hongchun Wu, Deokjung Lee
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 9 | September 2025 | Pages 1391-1405
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2438570
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study introduces a novel DXTRAN-based weight window generator (DWWG) for variance reduction in Monte Carlo (MC) radiation shielding calculations implemented in the MCS code developed at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. DWWG eliminates the iterative generation required by traditional weight window generators (WWGs) while ensuring target region scoring through the embedded DXTRAN. By incorporating virtual tracks of DXTRAN into the importance estimation, DWWG produces high-quality weight windows. Performance verification of two radiation shielding problems demonstrated that weight windows generated by DWWG, when combined with direct simulation or DXTRAN, yielded increased figures of merit and reduced relative standard deviations. These results establish DWWG as an effective WWG for variance reduction in MC simulations.