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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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
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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.
Koji Oishi, Yujiro Ikeda, Chikara Konno, Tomoo Nakamura
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 18 | Number 2 | September 1990 | Pages 291-309
Technical Paper | Shielding | doi.org/10.13182/FST90-A29301
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The principal components of concrete were irradiated by 14-MeV neutrons for measurement of their induced activities to verify the activation calculation code THIDA-2 and its related cross-section library CROSSLIB. The observed radioactive nuclides, whose half-lives range from minutes to years, were 28Al, 29Al, 27Mg, 44K, 41Ar, 56Mn, 42K, 24Na, 43K, 48Sc, 47Sc, 47Ca, 46Sc, 54Mn, and 22Na, Experimental and calculated results were compared. Good agreement was obtained within ±20%, for 28Al, 56Mn, 42K, 24Na, 48Sc, 47Ca, 46Sc, and 54Mn with well-estimated production cross sections. Large differences were also observed, however, ranging in value from −50 to +100%, for the other nuclides. The cross-section values near 14 MeV for these nuclides were replaced with the cross-section data measured at the Fusion Neutronics Source at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. Recalculation was performed using the newly estimated group cross sections derived from these data, and agreement between experiment and calculation was improved to within ±20%. From this experimental study, it was proved that the uncertainties of the activation cross-section values could satisfactorily explain the discrepancies of the induced activity calculation.
