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
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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
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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.
Ingvar Matsson, Björn Grapengiesser, Peter Jansson, Ane Håkansson, Anders Bäcklin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 122 | Number 3 | June 1998 | Pages 276-283
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2869
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Poolside measurements of fission gas release (FGR) in fuel pins have been made using gamma-ray spectroscopy with a Ge detector, measuring 85Kr activity in the fuel rod plenum. The gamma-ray energy spectra from irradiated nuclear fuel are characterized by prominent Compton distributions that can obscure the weak 514-keV 85Kr peak. To improve the sensitivity, the detector has been provided with an anti-Compton shield of six Bi3Ge4O12 detectors. Laboratory tests of the detector system showed that the maximum peak-to-Compton (p/c) ratio was improved by a factor of ~6. The results of the poolside measurement p/c ratio showed a somewhat smaller improvement (a factor of ~4) because of scattered gamma radiation from the surrounding material. However, the precision in the poolside FGR measurements was improved substantially utilizing the Compton shield.
