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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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The journey of the U.S. fuel cycle
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.
Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.
Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.
Gabriel Ghita, Glenn Sjoden, James Baciak
Nuclear Technology | Volume 159 | Number 3 | September 2007 | Pages 319-331
Technical Paper | Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3879
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plutonium-beryllium (Pu-Be) sources can be used as didactic source materials for special nuclear materials (SNM) detection evaluation protocols. Since limited specific information exists for many of the Pu-Be sources currently in service, before using a Pu-Be source for field studies, the leakage radiation of neutrons and gamma rays from the source must be fully assessed. Most Pu-Be sources have an outer stainless steel jacket and an inner tantalum jacket, with the Pu-Be homogeneously distributed throughout the inner jacket. To fully characterize the net leakage terms from our Pu-Be source, we applied three-dimensional radiation transport computations, including Monte Carlo (MCNP5) and deterministic (PENTRAN) methodologies. The transport model for our Pu-Be capsule is based on limited schematic and technical data. To define the decay history and resulting source spectrum, exothermic [alpha-neutron (,n)] reactions are modeled using OrigenArp in the SCALE5 package. For transport modeling purposes, the intermetallic Pu-Be compound was treated as an intimate mixture of plutonium and beryllium, based on the manufacturer's mass specifications. The net capsule leakage was derived using transport computations, and an iterative estimation of plutonium age was performed. Computational results for net leakage are in agreement with the manufacturer's specification of neutron yield and dose rate. We also combined computational results with experimental measurement data to fully validate our computational methods. We have successfully achieved agreement between computational and experimental data for our Pu-Be source leakage, and we are using the results at the Florida Institute of Nuclear Detection and Security to evaluate a prototype SNM neutron detector array for parcel screening and national security applications.