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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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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.
Jan-Ru Tang, Lainsu Kao, Der-Yeong Shiau, Lin-Yao Chou, Ching-Chuan Yao, Show-Chyuan Chiang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 121 | Number 3 | March 1998 | Pages 302-312
Technical Paper | RETRAN | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2842
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two analyses for Chinshan nuclear power station (CSNPS) show the RETRAN applications in reactor operations. One was used to find the root cause of a reactor trip due to high neutron flux (APRM Hi-Hi). Two of the four turbine control valves failed and closed rapidly. Whether the pressure increase caused the APRM Hi-Hi reactor scram was questioned. An analysis was performed to determine the way to bring unit 1 back to power. The second analysis was conducted to provide an evaluation of the consequences before a plant test planned for late 1994 to consider a design change upgrading recirculation flow control. However, there were concerns about reactor scram during execution of the test and the potential of entering the exclusive region of instability. Sensitivity studies on several different combinations of initial conditions and feedwater flow coastdown curves indicated potential problems with reactor trip and stability.
