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Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Pran K. Paul
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 6 | June 2019 | Pages 847-866
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1533319
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a comparative study of dose rate calculations for the ES-3100 package with highly enriched uranium (HEU) content for different source configurations using the following computer codes: MCNP, Automated Variance Reduction Generator (ADVANTG)/MCNP, Monaco, and Monaco with Automated Variance Reduction using Importance Calculations (MAVRIC). The Model ES-3100 package was developed at the Y-12 National Security Complex for domestic and international transportation of Type B fissile radioactive material. In this study, six different source configurations (i.e., solid cylinder, cylindrical hemishell, cylindrical shell, rectangular plate, cylindrical rod, and cylindrical segment form) having 36 kg of HEU metal inside the package containment vessel (based on configurations in the ES-3100/HEU safety analysis report for packaging) are evaluated. Dose rates at 1 mm and 1 m from the package surfaces are calculated for these different source configurations. The MCNP and Monaco cases are run without any biasing options to accelerate the convergence. The Consistent Adjoint Driven Importance Sampling and the Forward-Weighted Consistent Adjoint Driven Importance Sampling (FW-CADIS) methods developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory are implemented in the ADVANTG/MCNP and MAVRIC codes to accelerate the convergence. ADVANTG generates variance reduction parameters using the Denovo code, and MCNP is used with the variance reduction parameters to accelerate the convergence. MAVRIC uses the Denovo code to construct an importance map and a biased source distribution that are supplied to Monaco to accelerate the Monte Carlo simulation. The FW-CADIS option in ADVANTG and MAVRIC is used to accelerate the convergence in this study. The accelerated convergence cases (ADVANTG/MCNP and MAVRIC) are about 100 times faster with 100 times less particle simulation than those cases run without biasing options (analog MCNP and analog Monaco). The MCNP, ADVANTG/MCNP, Monaco, and MAVRIC calculated dose rates at 1 mm and 1 m from the package surfaces for the different source configurations are compared and are found to be in general agreement.