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Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
WIPP improves utility shaft safety, begins infrastructure project
Harrison Western Shaft Sinkers (HWSS), the company drilling a new utility shaft at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, has retained a safety culture expert following a near-miss accident in the shaft late last year. The safety expert will conduct monthly facilitated discussions with crews working on the shaft to reinforce expectations for identifying concerns regarding unsafe circumstances, according to a recent report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
Raymond T. Klann, Sergio C. de la Barrera, Richard B. Vilim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 301-313
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 16th Biennial Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division / Radiation Measurements and General Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12302
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Within the homeland security and emergency response communities, there is a need for a low-profile system to detect, locate, and identify radioactive sources in real time. Such a system could be deployed for area monitoring around venues for special events. A system was developed at Argonne National Laboratory, called RADTRAC, which is based on a network of radiation detectors and advanced signal-processing algorithms. The initial implementation of RADTRAC did not account for dynamically changing shielding due to crowd movements.An algorithm was developed that utilizes the gamma-ray energy spectrum from each detector to estimate the amount of attenuation and scattering that is present between the source location (a priori unknown) and the detector location in real time. The attenuation and scattering estimations are then included in the maximum likelihood model to significantly improve the source localization solution. Results are presented for several test cases showing the improvement in the real-time source localization solution.This algorithm has been implemented into the current version of RADTRAC such that it now accounts for the effects of dynamically changing shielding and scattering due to crowd movements in real time in order to accurately determine the source location in crowded venues.