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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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.
Nicolas Depauw, Sylvain Danto, Bryan Bednarz, Harald Paganetti, Yoel Fink, Joao Seco
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 6-10
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 16th Biennial Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division / Radiation Biology; Radiation Used in Medicine | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12261
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Proton radiography imaging qualities have been studied using Monte Carlo simulations. A specific phantom, made of different common tissues, was implemented for simulations using the Massachusetts General Hospital treatment proton beam, pure 230- and 490-MeV proton beams, and a pure 100-keV X-ray beam. Along with spatial resolution, the signal-to-noise ratio and the contrast-to-noise ratio were specified and compared for each tissue type and geometry, using filtered radiographs taking into account only primary proton interactions, both primary and secondary proton interactions, and both contributions while performing angular and energetic cuts. This work particularly highlights the faculty for proton radiography to image both low- and high-density tissues. This could play an important role in diagnosing specific tumor types, such as lung cancer, for which conventional radiography operates poorly.