Detection of Illicit Nuclear Materials Masked with other Gamma-Ray Emitters
The purpose of this work was to experimentally determine the extent to which legal shipments of radioisotopes could be used to mask the presence of illicit nuclear materials and the means by which this can be accomplished.
Spectroscopic portal identification of special nuclear materials
Spectroscopic portal monitors must detect and identify small quantities of special nuclear materials under difficult conditions. Verification of this ability is difficult due to limited access to these materials. This study uses spectra derived from measured spectra to test identification algorithms. This test method is used to determine the counts required for accurate identification of SNM. Test cases with masked SNM are also tested.
Creating the Virtual Universe
Simulation software is important to our understanding of the universe. The intrinsic multiphysics aspects are spiced with a range of temporal scales and spatial scales, both of which cover more digits than are available in the standard hardware. This, together with the intrinsic chaotic nature of many physical processes, poses quite a challenge. To meet this challenge, researchers developed the Astronomical Multipurpose Environment (AMUSE). Instead of writing a suite of multiphysics solvers from scratch, AMUSE's developers coupled existing solvers for each physical ingredient. The result is a highly inhomogeneous collection of dedicated solvers with a homogeneous protocol that scales to supercomputers.