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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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.
V. Abella, R. Miró, B. Juste, G. Verdú
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 53-57
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 16th Biennial Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division / Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12269
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work is focused on coupling PLanUNC (PLUNC), a set of software tools for radiotherapy treatment planning (RTP), with MCNP5 Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code, utilizing the RANDO phantom as the patient model and the Elekta Precise linac as the irradiation source for comparison. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to compare the results obtained from the default calculations of the treatment plan software with those obtained via the implementation of MCNP5 calculations. Monte Carlo techniques have been proved to be a more accurate dose calculation aid than conventional treatment planning systems, having the only limitation of computer time. The implementation of MCNP5 calculations in a commercial RTP software aims to provide more accurate dose mapping of the patient in reasonable computer times. The results obtained in this paper represent a significant contribution in the development of RTP patient dose simulations.
