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.
Robert J. Demyanovich, Scott Lynn
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 12 | Number 3 | November 1987 | Pages 488-501
Technical Paper | Inertial Confinement Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST87-A25080
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Process designs were evaluated for the continuous, large-scale generation of singlet delta oxygen for use in a chemical oxygen-iodine laser. The excited singlet oxygen is generated from the chemical reaction of chlorine gas with basic hydrogen peroxide. The chemical reaction also produces a large waste brine stream that can be controlled by recycling through a chlor-alkali cell, which regenerates the reactants Cl2 and NaOH. To prevent deactivation of this excited oxygen, a large excess of hydrogen peroxide is typically used to change the reaction mechanism. This use of excess hydrogen peroxide or nonstoichiometric generation leads to substantial increases in capital and operating costs when compared with theoretical stoichiometric (no excess) generation. For the generation of singlet oxygen at a 500-kW level of equivalent lasing power, a theoretical stoichiometric plant producing all reactants has an estimated capital cost of $38 million. The capital cost for a nonstoichiometric plant is $98 million. Operating costs are $0.68 and $2.12/lb of singlet oxygen, respectively. The energy efficiency of generation is ∼6.3% for the theoretical stoichiometric flow sheet and 3.3% for the nonstoichiometric flow sheet. At this nonstoichiometric efficiency, the use of a chemical oxygen iodine laser for photoneutralization of negative ion beams is probably not competitive with other technologies below a 750-keV neutral beam level.