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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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.
Orlin L. Blajiev, Chihiro Matsuura, Daisuke Hiroishi, Kenkichi Ishigure
Nuclear Technology | Volume 137 | Number 1 | January 2002 | Pages 60-71
Technical Paper | Radioisotopes | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3257
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The corrosion behavior of Zircaloy-2 in the presence of Zn was investigated. Zinc is a possible technological additive to be injected in the coolant to reduce the 60Co buildup. However, its influence on the cladding corrosion, alone or in combination with some typical corrosion impurities, as, for example, Cr, has not been considered so far. Because of this, the surface composition and electrochemical properties of Zircaloy specimens were investigated after their exposure to Zn2+, CrO42-, and CrO42- + Zn2+ aqueous solutions at 250°C. It was found that zinc-containing phases did not deposit from solutions containing on Zn2+ ions. Amorphous Cr3+-oxide and ZnCr2O4 ferrite phases were found on the surface of the samples after their exposure to CrO42- and CrO42- + Zn2+ environments, respectively. The amounts of the deposited Cr and Zn + Cr strongly depended on the times of the preconditioning of the Zircaloy specimens in high-temperature water. The rate of the oxide precipitation declined with increasing exposure time to both the CrO42- and CrO42- + Zn2+ solutions. The electrochemical measurement showed that the limiting factor of the Cr and Zn + Cr deposition reaction was the reduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III). The reduction completely depended on the resistance of ZrO2, Cr, and Zn + Cr oxides, which increased with the time of preconditioning and exposure. A thermodynamic analysis based on oxide solubilities was applied to explain the different deposition pathways in the CrO42- and CrO42- + Zn2+ environments. In view of the decreasing deposition rate of the Zn - Cr-oxide phases, it could be concluded that their limited precipitation and presence do not have a significant adverse effect on the fuel cladding corrosion.
