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
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Kostadin N. Ivanov, Tara M. Beam, Anthony J. Baratta, Ardesar Irani, Nicholas G. Trikouros
Nuclear Technology | Volume 133 | Number 2 | February 2001 | Pages 169-186
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3167
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A comparison of a point-kinetics calculation and a full three-dimensional thermal-hydraulic/kinetics calculation using TRAC-PF1/NEM is presented. The coupled TRAC-PF1/NEM methodology uses version 5.4 of the TRAC-PF1/MOD2 code, developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a special kinetics module, developed at The Pennsylvania State University and based on the nodal expansion method. Cross sections are obtained from two-dimensional tables generated using CASMO-3.The results of the analysis show that the point-kinetics calculation is conservative and predicts a return to power. The three-dimensional analysis shows no return to power despite an extended overfeeding of the affected generator with feedwater. The difference is believed to be caused by the inability of the standard point-kinetics method to properly account for the moderator density feedback, local effects, and flux redistribution, which occur during the transient.
