ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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.
J. B. Yang, X. G. Tuo, Z. Li, Y. Cheng, L. Wang, H. H. Wang, B. Cai, M. Z. Liu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 184 | Number 2 | November 2013 | Pages 233-238
Technical Paper | Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A22318
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To improve the yield of online prompt gamma neutron activation analysis, the Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code (MCNP) is used to simulate the computation and analysis of the material and thickness of reflectors on both sides of the sample chamber as well as the type and thickness of the neutron-absorbing material in front of the detector. The simulation shows that the optimal thickness of the reflecting material is [approximately]100 mm when heavy water is added on both sides of the sample chamber and the optimal thickness of the neutron-absorbing material is [approximately]50 mm when polyethylene-containing boron is added in front of the detector. The experiment demonstrated that the yield of prompt gamma rays of the main elements in the cement sample increased to some extent.
