ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Adam Davis, Donald J. Dudziak, Man-Sung Yim, David McNelis, H. Omar Wooten
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 3 | March 2011 | Pages 270-288
Technical Paper | Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-110
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In radiation protection, photon buildup factors provide a convenient method for calculating dose and exposure response after various shielding configurations, as well as information about the behavior of radiation in these configurations. Though many situations call for multilayer shields, few databases and derived analytical formulas for photon buildup in multilayer shields exist. This research develops buildup factors and analytical fits to these data for slab-geometric, dual-layer shields composed of various materials. The photon buildup factors were calculated for monoenergetic photon sources incident on two-layer shields of various combinations of lead, polyethylene, aluminum, and stainless steel for thicknesses varying between 2 and 20 mean free paths using the Parallel Time Independent Sn (PARTISN) discrete ordinates code. The Gauss-Lobatto S100 quadrature was used with a 244-energy-group structure and coupled photon and electron cross sections. Data from PARTISN calculations were then benchmarked for representative cases using MCNP5, and fits to a new analytical formula were developed using Mathematica 6.0.