ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
Undeclared uranium hitches a ride on cobalt exports from Congo, study says
Philippe (left) and Manzuk quantified the amount of uranium that has been exported from the DRC in cobalt shipments or left behind in the environment. (Photo: Joel Hallberg/UW–Madison)
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Princeton University have published a study in Nature Communications that calls attention to a blind spot in nuclear nonproliferation: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has exported thousands of metric tons of uranium, and there is no accounting for where it has gone.
In partnership with Lighthouse Reports and the Financial Times, UW–Madison nuclear engineering professor and nuclear security expert Sébastien Philippe and Ryan Manzuk, a geologist and research fellow in Philippe’s group and at Princeton, conducted the study using countrywide mineralization and geochemical data.
Z. W. Lin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 1 | October 2009 | Pages 128-131
Dose/Dose Rate | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (Part 1) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9112
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In space radiation calculations it is often useful to calculate the dose or dose equivalent in blood-forming organs (BFOs), the eye, or the skin. Sometimes, an equivalent sphere is used to represent the organ for a fast estimate of the organ dose. It has been found that the equivalent sphere model (ESM) can approximate organ dose or dose equivalent values in galactic cosmic-ray environments. In solar particle event (SPE) environments, the model works marginally for BFOs, but it does not work for the eye or the skin. Here, we study the improvement of the ESM. Motivated by the two-component thickness distributions of the eye and the skin, we use two spheres with proper weights to represent the eye or the skin, and this drastically improves the accuracy. For example, in SPE environments, the average error for the skin dose equivalent using two spheres to represent the skin is [approximately]8%, while the average error using a single sphere is [approximately]100%.