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
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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.
H. W. Kugel, H. P. Eubank, T. A. Kozub, M. D. Williams, M. Ulrickson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 9 | Number 3 | May 1986 | Pages 401-407
Technical Paper | Plasma Heating System | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24728
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During 2 yr of experimental operations, the Poloidal Divertor Experiment (PDX) inner wall neutral beam graphite armor provided protection for perpendicular heating injections into normal and disruptive plasmas as well as injections in the absence of plasma for special experiments, calibrations, and tests involving the optimization and development of the PDX neutral beam injection system. About 80 to 100 heating injections occurred per operating day, at a 360-s duty cycle, into plasmas of various densities, and typically ~5 to 50% of the injected neutral beam power was transmitted to the armor. More than 103 neutral beam pulses of 100- to 300-ms duration were injected in the absence of plasma at peak power densities of 1.5 to 3 kW/cm2, yielding peak surface temperatures of 950 to 1550°C. There was no significant impurity production attributable to beam heating of the armor, and no observed beam-induced, macroscopic surface damage. Many of the design constraints and performance issues encountered in this work are relevant to the design of larger fusion devices.
