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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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.
Luigi Brusa, Alessandro Bianchi, Giancarlo Fruttuoso, Antonio Manfredini, Francesco Oriolo, Mario D. Carelli, Robert P. Kendig, Fred E. Peters
Nuclear Technology | Volume 133 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 63-76
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3159
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several advanced nuclear plant concepts are characterized by the use of innovative cooling systems that remove the heat released inside the containment following a hypothetical accident, such as a loss-of-coolant accident, through passive heat transfer mechanisms. The design and installation of a localized passive containment cooling system (PCCS) inside a double-wall concrete containment requires the reliable knowledge of temporal and spatial distribution of noncondensable gas concentration, especially hydrogen, in a multicompartment geometry. Testing was conducted in the Large-Scale Containment Test Facility located at the Westinghouse Science and Technology Center in Pittsburgh, and the testing was modified to simulate in approximately one-tenth scale the main features of a concrete containment, designed by the Italian National Electric Utility (ENEL), in which the heat is removed through internal heat exchangers (HX) located in the dome region, and connected by an intermediate fluid loop to external HXs placed outside the double barrier concrete containment. No active component like pumps or human intervention are required for the operation of the system. The facility instrumentation, the test program, and the experimental results are described along with the first results obtained in the application of the FUMO code to the analysis of these experimental tests. The experimental data measured during the tests include temperature distributions inside the containment, helium concentrations at four internal locations, and laser Doppler anemometer measures to determine the atmosphere mixing under different simulated accident conditions. The experimental results indicate that helium, which simulates the hydrogen that may be released during some accident sequences, is distributed rather homogeneously inside the facility. The very good mixing exhibited by the helium indicates that the localized PCCS induces efficient convective motions inside the containment atmosphere, and this is a positive indication for safety analysis.
