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Conference 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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INL makes a case for eliminating ALARA and setting higher dose limits
A report just released by Idaho National Laboratory reviews decades of radiation protection standards and research on the health effects of low-dose radiation and recommends that the current U.S. annual occupational dose limit of 5,000 mrem be maintained without applying ALARA—the “as low as reasonably achievable” regulatory concept first introduced in 1971—below that threshold.
Noting that epidemiological studies “have consistently failed to demonstrate statistically significant health effects at doses below 10,000 mrem delivered at low dose rates,” the report also recommends “future consideration of increasing this limit to 10,000 mrem/year with appropriate cumulative-dose constraints.”
A. M. Reda
Nuclear Technology | Volume 194 | Number 3 | June 2016 | Pages 400-405
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-92
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An investigation room to interrogate packages and baggage at airports, based on a neutron-induced gamma-ray method, was designed using the MCNP5 Monte Carlo radiation transport code. A pulsed neutron generator source of interval time responses 10 μs turned on and 100 μs turned off was used for the investigation. Gamma-ray emissions in the forward, scattering angle of 90 deg, and backward directions were detected in the two cases of neutron generator (turned on/turned off). The detected data revealed that gamma rays in the forward direction have a signal-to-background ratio higher than the other positions. In addition, thermal neutron capture detected in the turned-off interval showed larger numbers of good signal-to-background ratio than that in the turned-on interval. The results show that the detection of gamma rays induced with a pulsed neutron source can be applied as a basic technique in airports to identify smuggled illicit materials.
