Review of the international conference on nuclear criticality-issues, discussions, and challenges

The Fifth International Conference on Nuclear Criticality Safety (ICNC'95) was held September 17-22, 1995, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Organization and support for the conference was provided by the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the University of New Mexico, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This conference traces its history back to 1981 when a group of select criticality safety specialists (mostly experimentalists) from France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States participated in a small conference at LANL in the United States. The motivation for the conference had been provided by Dr. J. C. Manaranche of France who had asked D. Smith and G. E. Whitesides of the United States if it would be possible for the French experimentalists to be able to visit the experimental facilities at LANL. This first conference was followed by a similar conference held in Dijon, France, in 1993. Then in 1987 the conference was hosted by the Japanese and opened to much wider participation by criticality safety specialists involved in experiments, methods development and analysis, and operations. With the 1987 conference in Japan and the fourth conference (ICNC'91) held in the United Kingdom, the interest and international participation by the criticality safety community has grown rapidly. With this background, the occasion of ICNC'95 was one of much expectation