ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Mathematics & Computation
Division members promote the advancement of mathematical and computational methods for solving problems arising in all disciplines encompassed by the Society. They place particular emphasis on numerical techniques for efficient computer applications to aid in the dissemination, integration, and proper use of computer codes, including preparation of computational benchmark and development of standards for computing practices, and to encourage the development on new computer codes and broaden their use.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
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.
S. E. Attenberger, W. A. Houlberg
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 129-134
Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22856
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Energy relaxation and spatial diffusion of fast alpha particles are incorporated into a multienergy group model which is coupled to a fluid transport code for the thermal plasma species. The multienergy group equations evolve the temporal- and spatial-dependent alpha particle distribution function and thus determine alpha particle heating and loss rates for arbitrary thermalization and diffusion models. The effects of deviations from classical, local thermalization on plasma performance are discussed. It is shown that spatial diffusion can lead to inversion of the fast ion distribution function even if thermalization remains classical. This inversion may drive instabilities and lead to anomalous thermalization. Ripple-induced spatial diffusion of fast alphas is used to illustrate the importance of extending the analysis to include pitch angle dependence.
