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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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My story: Dennis Mosebey—ANS member since 1981
. . . and today.
Mosebey in 1984 . . .
I graduated from high school in 1969. My yearbook says my career ambition was to be a nuclear physicist. This was inspired by a paperback book I read: Men Who Made a New Physics by Barbara Lovett Cline. I enrolled as a physics student at Susquehanna University that fall and graduated four years later. Many job applications were sent out, but I quickly learned in any branch of physics you needed at least a master’s degree and preferably a Ph.D. So, I applied to the Penn State nuclear engineering program as a master’s degree candidate. This would not be nuclear physics, but it would be close enough. To help with expenses, Penn State had quite a few internships with branches of Westinghouse, and mine was a three-month-long stint that summer at the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor project at Waltz Mill, Pa. My job was to work on expanding the uranium-238 fast fission cross sections into the 20-MeV range. Of course, I had no idea what a cross section was, but my supervisor, Gene Paik, and my office partners, especially Colin Durston, were immensely helpful.
Andreas Pritzker, Jrg Gassmann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 48 | Number 3 | May 1980 | Pages 289-297
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32475
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method has been developed that is based on simplified reliability models and that allows us to estimate the risk of nuclide release from underground nuclear waste repositories. The prototype repository is treated as a combination of geological and man-made barriers. Risk depends on time and is expressed as failure probability of the barrier system for all possible initiating events, multiplied by the inventory to be released. The results include, for each nuclide, the time and amount of the maximum probable discharge rate, which can be used in a biosphere transport model. They also illustrate the effectiveness of single barriers in the barrier system, and therefore allow a preselection among alternative barrier concepts, barrier qualities, and repository sites. The probabilistic failure models for the single barriers and the entire barrier system depend on only a few parameters; therefore, the application of the method is fast and inexpensive. It has to be stressed, however, that this simple method cannot replace more detailed and sophisticated risk studies, but allows concentrating them on preselected repository concepts. It therefore represents a useful tool in the early design and site evaluation phase for all kinds of repositories and waste types. Its usefulness has been demonstrated by performing several case studies with the computer program WRISK on some typical nuclides in high level waste, bearing in mind that for a repository concept all nuclides of possible importance should be considered.