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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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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
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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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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.
H. W. Kugel, M. Ulrickson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 2 | Number 4 | October 1982 | Pages 712-722
Technical Paper | First-Wall Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST82-A20810
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The inner wall protective plates for the Poloidal Divertor Experiment Tokamak are designed to absorb 8 MW of neutral deuterium beam power at maximum power densities of 3 kW/cm2 for pulse lengths of 0.5 s. Preliminary studies indicate that the design could survive several pulses of 1-s duration. The design consists of a tile and mounting plate structure. The mounting plates are water cooled to allow short duty cycles and beam calorimetry. The temperature and flow of the coolant are measured to obtain the injected power. A thermocouple array on the tiles provides beam position and power density profiles. Several material combinations for the tiles were subjected to thermal tests using both electron and neutral beams, and titanium-carbide-coated graphite was selected as the tile material. The heat transfer coefficient of the tile backing plate structure was measured to determine the maximum pulse rate allowable. The design of the armor system allows the structure to be used as a neutral beam power diagnostic and as an inner plasma limiter. The electrical and cooling systems external to the vacuum vessel are discussed.
