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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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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.
Robert S. Brundage, Bill G. Motes, Preston Gant
Nuclear Technology | Volume 11 | Number 3 | July 1971 | Pages 400-405
Technical Paper | Nuclear Explosion Engineering / Nuclear Explosive | doi.org/10.13182/NT71-A30874
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A system has been developed and tested for continuously monitoring a natural gas stream for the beta activity of both tritium and 85Kr. The system uses a proportional counter whose sensitive volume is limited to about 24% of the total volume by a set of four separate cathode frameworks. This feature avoids a buildup of background activity due to the daughter products of 222Rn, which tend to plate out in insensitive regions of the counter. Appropriate pressure, temperature, and flow controls are provided to operate the system either in the static or flowing mode. In the latter, the residence time of the counting gas is about ten minutes. An 55Fe source (5.9-keV 55Mn x rays) is used for calibrating system gain. Output pulses from diagonally opposed anodes are summed separately, amplified, and processed by pulse height analysis and coincidence circuitry to provide upper and lower energy logic pulse outputs. Optimum discriminator levels are chosen to exclude pulses due to tritium events from the upper energy channel but to include therein a substantial fraction of pulses due to 85Kr events. Calibration constants and pulse distribution factors are determined for operating conditions of pressure (2.75 bars, 40 psia), temperature (38°C), and gain in the presence of the sample gas by dilution with standard gases made with commercial grade CH4 having known specific activities of either tritium or 85Kr. The system threshold (two sigma) for detection of either tritium or 85Kr has been determined to be about 2 × 10−3 pCi/cm3 in the absence of 222Rn and a factor of 3 greater with typical concentrations of 222Rn. For comparison, the radioactivity concentration guides (in air) are 3 × 10−1 pCi/cm3 for 85Kr and 2 × 10−1 pCi/cm3 for tritium. Estimates are given for the threshold for detection of either activity, tritium or 85Kr, in the presence of the other, 10% of the 85Kr activity for tritium and a few percent of the tritium activity for 85Kr.