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Growth beyond megawatts
Hash Hashemianpresident@ans.org
When talking about growth in the nuclear sector, there can be a somewhat myopic focus on increasing capacity from year to year. Certainly, we all feel a degree of excitement when new projects are announced, and such announcements are undoubtedly a reflection of growth in the field, but it’s important to keep in mind that growth in nuclear has many metrics and takes many forms.
Nuclear growth—beyond megawatts—also takes the form of increasing international engagement. That engagement looks like newcomer countries building their nuclear sectors for the first time. It also looks like countries with established nuclear sectors deepening their connections and collaborations. This is one of the reasons I have been focused throughout my presidency on bringing more international members and organizations into the fold of the American Nuclear Society.
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.