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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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.
William L. Barr, B. G. Logan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 7 | Number 2 | March 1985 | Pages 201-205
Technical Note | First-Wall Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A24535
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is shown that the erosion of the first wall due to sputtering in a tandem mirror fusion reactor (TMR) is not a serious problem. An erosion rate in the 0.3 μm/yr to 0.3 mm/yr range for the Mirror Advanced Reactor Study parameters is estimated. The natural end loss in a TMR deposits most of the charged-particle power and fueling current on the end collectors, far from the first wall. Therefore, most of the heating and sputtering take place on massive structures in the end tanks and do not affect the design of the first wall and blanket. Furthermore, the cool halo plasma in a TMR protects the first wall by reducing both the energy and the flux of particles that recycle between the wall the plasma.
