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Division Spotlight
Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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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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.
Jack D. Law, David H. Meikrantz, Troy G. Garn, Lawrence L. Macaluso
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 2 | February 2011 | Pages 191-199
Technical Paper | High Level Waste | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A11548
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Advanced designs of spent nuclear fuel recycling processes and radioactive waste treatment processes are expected to include more ambitious goals for aqueous-based separations, including higher separation efficiency, high-level waste minimization, and a greater focus on continuous processes to minimize cost and footprint. Therefore, annular centrifugal contactors are destined to play a more important role for such future processing schemes. Pilot-scale testing will be an integral part of development of many of these processes. An advanced design for remote maintenance of pilot-scale centrifugal contactors has been developed and a prototype module fabricated and tested for a commercially available pilot-scale centrifugal contactor (CINC V-02, 5-cm rotor diameter). Advanced design features include air-actuated clamps for holding the motor/rotor assembly in place, an integral electrical connection, upper flange O-rings, a welded bottom plate, a lifting bale, and guide pins. These design features will allow for rapid replacement of the motor/rotor assembly, which can be accomplished while maintaining process equilibrium in the operating contactors during replacement of a unit. This means that fluids in the operating contactors remain at equilibrium with respect to composition and that process solutions are ready to resume discharge when the contactor is replaced and feed solutions are restarted. Hydraulic testing of a three-stage prototype unit was also performed to verify that design changes did not impact performance of the centrifugal contactors. Details of the pilot-scale remote maintenance design, results of testing in a remote mock-up test facility, and results of hydraulic testing of the advanced design are provided.