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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.
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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
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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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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.
C. Z. Cheng
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 18 | Number 3 | November 1990 | Pages 443-454
Alpha Particles in Fusion Research | Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST90-A29280
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The NOVA-K code is employed to study the effects of alpha particles on two types of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modes: (a) the stabilization of ideal MHD internal modes and the excitation of resonant internal modes, and (b) the alpha-particle destabilization of toroidicity-induced Alfvén eigenmodes (TAEs) via transit resonances. Analytical theories are also presented to help explain the NOVA-K results. The trapped alpha particles are found to destabilize the n = 1 internal mode and lower the total beta threshold. The circulating alpha particles can strongly destabilize TAE modes via inverse Landau damping associated with the spatial gradient of the alpha-particle pressure.
