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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
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Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
Soren Harrison et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 277-281
Divertor and High-Heat-Flux Components | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A18089
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Operational requirements and research considerations make a high-temperature, toroidally continuous outer divertor an important upgrade to the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. Leading edge melting of tiles, non-uniform heat loads, large electromagnetic forces, and localized impurity sources limit the performance of bulk plasmas. These issues can be addressed by the installation of a well-aligned, toroidally continuous outer divertor. Additionally, future long pulse operation will cause the temperature of the outer divertor to reach bulk temperatures as high as 500 - 600 °C. This future operational requirement combined with the strong temperature dependence of plasma surface interactions (especially fuel retention), makes a controllable, high-temperature outer divertor desirable and necessary. The motivation, criteria, design, and R&D for the upgrade are discussed below.
