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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!
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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.
Pran K. Paul, Michael V. Gregory, Tunc Aldemir
Nuclear Technology | Volume 137 | Number 2 | February 2002 | Pages 147-162
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3264
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A dynamic optimization scheme has been developed to generate high-level-waste (HLW) blending sequences that optimize waste-processing parameters such as raw waste volume processed in a batch, waste-processing time, or waste-processing cost. The optimization algorithm takes advantage of the linear algebraic equation formulation and the continuous-discrete event mapping algorithms used in the Production Planning Model (ProdMod) simulator development. The FORTRAN-based optimizer is interfaced with the SPEEDUP-based dynamic process simulator ProdMod. The optimization scheme has been successfully implemented to maximize the amount of raw waste volume processed in a batch for one of the salt-processing options at the Savannah River Site HLW complex. Parametric studies demonstrate that this optimization scheme provides a realistic approach for guiding the operation of HLW complexes. The optimization scheme is applicable to other sites in the nuclear waste complex (e.g., Hanford) and also for process industries where the dynamics are simulated using Aspen Technology's SPEEDUP software development package.
