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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.
Terry Kammash, David L. Galbraith
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 16 | Number 4 | December 1989 | Pages 469-473
Technical Paper | Special Section: Cold Fusion Technical Notes / Tritium System | doi.org/10.13182/FST89-A29109
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two schemes have been proposed to replace the aging tritium production facilities at Savannah River, South Carolina. The reactors at that site have been operating for well over a quarter of a century, producing tritium for national defense programs. But serious questions regarding safety and other issues have arisen. The U.S. Department of Energy and the federal government have reiterated their plan to build a heavy water reactor and a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor at a cost of about $7 billion as replacements for the Savannah River facility. A group of scientists from national laboratories, on the other hand, have proposed the use of a linear accelerator to accelerate protons to produce neutrons to be used to produce tritium in lithium targets. They contend that the capital cost of this accelerator tritium producer is competitive with that of the reactors, but the operating cost may be high unless it is located in a region where the cost of hydropower is low. Yet another scheme is proposed that is safe and potentially less expensive than the other two. It relies on existing or rapidly developing laser technology to drive a magnetically insulated inertial confinement fusion device, which has already produced copious amounts of neutrons that could readily be used in producing tritium.