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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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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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.
Yu Tang, Christopher Grandy, Ralph Seidensticker
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 2 | February 2011 | Pages 135-152
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A11543
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present the results of a survey of the state of seismic isolation technology. The emphasis of the review is placed in the United States. The purpose of this survey was to provide an engineering basis for the use of seismic isolation in the design of nuclear power plants. In particular, the survey is focused on providing a basis for the design of advanced fast reactor (AFR) nuclear power plants. These AFR plants typically have components and piping that are thin walled as opposed to the thick-walled components and piping in light water reactor (LWR) plants. As a result the AFR plants do not have the adequate inherent strength to resist seismic loads that exists in the LWR plants. It is far more desirable, therefore, to reduce the seismic demand on the AFR plants than to require costly measures to strengthen the structures and components. It is believed that the use of seismic isolation is a viable and effective way to provide this reduction in seismic demand. Various types of seismic isolation systems and devices are reviewed along with their strengths and weaknesses. Descriptions of several U.S. seismically isolated buildings are presented. The results of actual performance of seismically isolated buildings are also presented, including representative measurements of accelerations in the structures when subjected to actual seismic events. It is concluded that the seismic isolation technology is well established and that the path forward leading to the use of this technology for AFR nuclear power plants is clear and achievable.