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
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!
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.
Shunsuke Ishimoto, Kenji Ishibashi, Hideki Tenzou, Toshinobu Sasa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 138 | Number 3 | June 2002 | Pages 300-312
Technical Paper | Accelerators | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-1
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since thorium is an abundant fertile material, there is hope for the thorium-cycle fuels for an accelerator driven subcritical system (ADS). The ADS utilizes neutrons, which are generated by high-energy protons of giga-electron-volt-grade, but cross sections for the interaction of high-energy particles are not available for use in current ADS engineering design. In this paper the neutron behavior in the ADS target based on the related experimental data is clarified, and the feasibility of the ADS regarding both the molten salts (Flibe: 7LiF-BeF2-ThF4-233UF4, chloride: NaCl-ThCl4-233UCl4) and oxide ([Th, 233U]O2) fuels is examined. The difference between the experiment and the calculated result at the ADS high-energy region is discussed. In a comparison of the fuels, the time evolution of keff and the beam current in the burning period are calculated. The calculated results suggest that the ADS with solid fuel has better future prospects than that with molten-salt fuels. The ADS with Flibe molten-salt fuel tends to require a high beam current and consequently needs the installation of a metallic spallation target and the continuous removal for fission products and protactinium. In comparison with the Flibe fuel, the ADS with chloride fuel has a flux distribution that is similar to a solid fuel reactor.
