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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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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. Pelloni, E.T. Chenga)
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 841-847
Neutronics and Shielding | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22965
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Fusion Engineering Device (FED) was used as a basis to investigate the uncertainties of several neutronics performance parameters that arise due to nuclear data uncertainties. The neutron flux distribution was calculated using the discrete-ordinates transport code ANISN. Nuclear data considered were from the VITAMIN-C (DLC-41) library. Atomic displacement rate in the TF coil copper stabilizer, nuclear heating in the epoxybased insulation material and TF coil, and energy multiplication were estimated. The cross section sensitivity study was performed using the sensitivity analysis code SWANLAKE. It shows that the copper atomic displacement rate in the inboard TF coil is known within ± 24 %. The nuclear heating in the inboard insulation material and TF coil are known within ± 21 % and ± 12.5 %, respectively. The uncertainties are primarily due to the iron inelastic scattering cross sections in the 14 MeV energy range.
