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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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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
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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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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.
Kenneth D. Wright, James S. Tulenko, Edward T. Dugan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 123 | Number 3 | September 1998 | Pages 259-267
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2897
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code System (MCNP) criticality calculations were performed on a library of critical benchmark experiments to obtain preliminary bias values and subcritical margins to be utilized in licensing calculations for high-level radioactive waste disposal.The critical experiments library includes a broad range of system physical and neutronic characteristics that are representative of a range of potential criticality configurations relevant to long-term deep geological disposal. Two hundred and eighty-nine critical benchmark experiments were selected and grouped into 20 critical experiment classifications.From the results of this study, an applicable subcritical margin or maximum allowable keff can be selected for preliminary repository criticality analysis based on the similarity between the physical and neutronic characteristics of the system being analyzed and the relevant library classification. The results of this study provide quantification of both the confidence associated with the MCNP code and the presented conservative method for performing criticality evaluations relevant to repository emplacement of high-level radioactive waste.
