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DOE nuclear cleanup costs, schedule delays continue to rise, GAO says
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management faces significant cost increases, schedule delays, and data management issues in completing nuclear waste cleanup projects, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
R. A. Lillie, R. T. Santoro, R. G. Alsmiller, Jr.
Nuclear Technology | Volume 52 | Number 2 | February 1981 | Pages 313-318
Technical Note | Analysis | doi.org/10.13182/NT81-A32675
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo methods have been used to calculate neutron die-away times in a large-vehicle portal monitor. These calculations were performed to investigate the adequacy of using neutron die-away time measurements to detect the clandestine movement of shielded nuclear materials. The geometry consisted of a large tunnel lined with 3He proportional counters. The time behavior of the (n,p) capture reaction in these counters was calculated when the tunnel contained a number of different tractor-trailer load configurations. Neutron die-away times obtained from weighted least-squares fits to these data were compared. The change in neutron die-away time due to the replacement of cargo in a fully loaded truck with a spherical shell containing 240 kg of borated polyethylene was calculated to be <3%. This result, together with the overall behavior of neutron die-away time versus mass inside the tunnel, strongly suggests that measurements of this type do not provide a reliable means of detecting shielded nuclear materials in a large vehicle.