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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
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.
Junli Li, Shenjin Ming, Yanfeng Cao, Yanli Deng
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 2 | November 2009 | Pages 391-398
Shielding | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (Part 2) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9215
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The X-ray container/vehicle inspection system is a large and complex radiation application facility. To evaluate and optimize the shielding design for the system, a Monte Carlo method including two-step simulation, biasing sampling, and a scattering flag technique has been used to perform the shielding analysis - instead of the traditional empirical formula calculation.When the Monte Carlo method is applied to a complicated large system, some special techniques shall be used to obtain high accuracy and high efficiency in calculation. A special Monte Carlo method based on Geant4, including two-step simulation, biasing sampling, and scattering flag techniques, has been developed in this paper. For the two-step simulation, the first step is to simulate the electron transport inside the tungsten target of a linac and generate X-ray photons; the second step is to simulate the X-ray photon transport in the inspection system. For the biasing sampling, only the photons inside the X-ray beam are simulated and tracked. This allows more photons to reach the inspection system boundary. For the scattering flag, the trace of every photon reaching the inspection system boundary is recorded and stored, thus providing the possibility to tag the main dose contributors to the system boundary and allowing optimization of the shielding design.The simulation results on the inspection system boundary agree well with the measured results, and the key radiation contributors to the radiation dose on the system boundary are found with the scattering flag technique.A special Monte Carlo method combined with two-step simulation, biasing sampling and scattering flag techniques, has been developed and successfully used in the shielding design and optimization in an X-ray container/vehicle inspection system.
