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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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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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.
James F. Stubbins
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 1 | July 1983 | Pages 102-119
Technical Paper | Icf chamber Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22779
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermionic power production is shown to be a viable technique for increasing dry-wall inertial confinement fusion (ICF) power output. Thermionic cells produce electricity directly in a topping cycle run off the high temperatures generated at the first vacuum wall by the absorption of fusion product x rays and charged particles. The high temperatures are used to heat the thermionic emitter, which is an integral part of the first wall The principal engineering consideration is the means of providing the emitter with a high steady-state operating temperature, while the reactor itself operates a pulsed mode with ICF events occurring at between 1 and 20/s. It is shown that several design variables, including materials selection, first-wall thickness, and target firing rate can be chosen to satisfy the emitter temperature requirements. Furthermore, heating requirements do not rely on neutron attenuation, so neutrons can be conserved to meet tritium breeding requirements in the blanket. Several other aspects of the thermionic system design and engineering are discussed. These are related to the current state of development of thermionic convertors, and to possible further advances in the technology.