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Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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
The U.S. Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
Benjamin C. Bowers, Bojan Petrovic
Nuclear Technology | Volume 189 | Number 2 | February 2015 | Pages 186-201
Technical Note | Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-162
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
New computational methods in dose assessment and shielding calculations have drastically increased possible accuracy and resolution of the solution, while also increasing both memory demand and running time. In many cases, a trade-off must occur between these two parameters due to limited computational resources. This becomes prominent, particularly in hybrid deterministic-stochastic methods used for automated variance reduction, where the trade-off is additionally sought between the importance-generating deterministic portion and actual Monte Carlo simulations. This technical note examines this trade-off for the FW-CADIS methodology implemented in the MAVRIC (Monaco with Automated Variance Reduction using Importance Calculations) module of SCALE6, applying it to a simplified model of a power reactor. For the purposes of this study, the allowed total CPU time was held constant (12 and 48 h). It was found that improving the accuracy of the deterministic portion (within the single-processor limitation of the program version used) at the cost of reducing the available time for Monte Carlo was beneficial for the overall efficiency. While the analysis is specific to the selected problem, it is expected that the findings in a broader sense are relevant for other similar hybrid shielding methodologies and applications.