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Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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 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.
Andrej Prosek, Borut Mavko
Nuclear Technology | Volume 126 | Number 2 | May 1999 | Pages 170-185
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A2965
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
When best-estimate calculations are performed, the uncertainties need to be quantified. Worldwide, various methods have been proposed for this quantification. Rather than proposing a new uncertainty methodology, a contribution is made to the existing code scaling, applicability, and uncertainty (CSAU) method. A small-break loss-of-coolant accident with the break in the cold leg of a Westinghouse-type two-loop pressurized water reactor was selected for the analysis, and the CSAU methodology was used for uncertainty quantification. The uncertainty was quantified for the RELAP5/MOD3.2 thermal-hydraulic computer code. Some tools suggested by the uncertainty methodology based on accuracy extrapolation (UMAE) method were successfully applied to improve the CSAU methodology, particularly for nodalization qualification. A critical scenario with core uncovery was selected for the analysis, which showed that when uncertainty is added to the peak cladding temperature, the safety margin is sufficient. The tools developed by the UMAE method showed that the structure of the CSAU method is universal because it does not prescribe tools for the analysis.