Title:

Applications of Radiation Transport Computations in Reactor Physics and SNM Detection Applications

Speaker:

Prof. Glenn Sjoden

Affiliation:

Georgia Institute of Technology

When:

Thursday, September 6, 2012 at 11:00:00 AM   Add to Calendar

Where:

Boggs Building, Room 3-47

Host:

Dr. Sjoden
glenn.sjoden@me.gatech.edu
404-894-5733

Abstract

It has been said that “with better analysis methods comes increased understanding.” This is never truer when we apply both deterministic and Monte Carlo radiation transport methods to real world problems of interest. In this presentation, Dr. Glenn Sjoden will first focus on recent work with EDF on parallel benchmark testing of the PENTRAN Sn Code for full core simulations on high performance computers, and then shift to discuss synthetic resolution enhancement of scintillator spectra for SNM detection using Monte Carlo generated kernels. He will also discuss a new protocol for passive gamma detection of highly enriched uranium. This work has led to several new projects now ongoing at GT. It will be clear that mastering radiation transport modeling methods, leveraging both deterministic and Monte Carlo methods, is central to problem solving in nuclear engineering applications.

Biography

Dr Glenn Sjoden has over 28 years of experience, spanning a broad range of science and engineering applications serving in numerous capacities – technical director, nuclear research officer, professor, lead design engineer, and licensed engineering consultant. He served in the USAF for over 20 years as a career nuclear research officer (Lt Col (ret)); during much of that time he was assigned to the Air Force Technical Applications Center performing nuclear treaty monitoring, and as a faculty member at the USAF Academy. An expert in non-proliferation research and engineering, Dr. Sjoden is currently a Professor of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering under the George W. Woodruff School at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and is Director of Georgia Tech’s Radiological Science and Engineering Laboratory. He is also an expert in deterministic and Monte Carlo radiation transport computational methods, with significant experience in parallel/high performance computing development, optimization, and integrated system simulation. He is the principal developer of the PENTRAN 3-D parallel deterministic radiation transport code. Dr. Sjoden’s related research interests include SNM detection, nuclear power generation/ burnup simulation, non-destructive testing, nuclear medicine applications, computational fluids, and heat transfer. He was recently recognized for service to the public for providing rapid technical response in the media regarding the Fukushima, Japan accident with an American Nuclear Society Presidential Citation in June 2011.