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.
J Lupo, J L Hemmerich, R Lässer, J Yorkshades, J L Salanave
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | October 1995 | Pages 1347-1352
Design, Operation, and Maintenance of Tritium System | Proceedings of the Fifth Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology In Fission, Fusion, and Isotopic Applications Belgirate, Italy May 28-June 3, 1995 | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30599
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Impurity Processing (IP) system is designed to recover tritium from tritiated compounds (Q2O, CxQy, NQ3, with Q = H, D, T and x>=1, y>=4) collected from the JET torus or generated during the processing of gases inside the Active Gas Handling System (AGHS). The recovery process involves dilution of the impurities in helium, addition of oxygen, recirculation of the helium-impurities-oxygen mixture over a hot recombiner (773K) to generate water and CO2, and trapping of the water on 160K cold surfaces. The remaining gas species He, CO2, O2, N2 (with a very small tritium concentration) are transferred finally to the Exhaust Detritiation (ED) system for further reduction of the tritium concentration by at least a factor of 1000. The cold trap is heated (473K) and the water vapour passed over two hot iron beds at 823K to “crack” the water. The recovered hydrogen isotopes are stored in cold uranium beds (U-beds) for further processing in AGHS.
