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Division Spotlight
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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
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.
Richard V. Carlson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 544-549
Environment and Safety | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22920
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the primary objectives of the Tritium Systems Test Assembly is to demonstrate that the technologies associated with the DT fuel cycle for a fusion reactor can be operated safely and operated with minimal environmental impact. During the design and construction phase, safety analyses were performed to investigate the effects of normal operations, of component failure, of operational failures, and of failures induced by natural phenomena. The effects on operation personnel, the general public and the environment were determined. Major releases of tritium were found to be highly improbable (<10−6/year) since they require a compound failure of primary and secondary containment, along with either a breach of the building or a failure of the room cleanup system. The effects from normal operations and high probability failures were also determined to be minimal.
