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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
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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.
Andrew C. Kauffman, Don W. Miller, Thomas D. Radcliff, Keith W. Maupin, Daniel J. Mills, V. Matthew Penrod
Nuclear Technology | Volume 140 | Number 2 | November 2002 | Pages 222-232
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technologies | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3335
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An in-reactor test facility has been designed and built at The Ohio State University Research Reactor to evaluate the static and dynamic performance of nuclear reactor in-core sensors in environmental and neutronic conditions comparable to those expected in a high-temperature gas reactor. The primary objective for design and construction of this facility was to evaluate the performance of prototype constant-temperature power sensors. The facility can test sensors and materials over a wide range of temperatures up to 800°C, over a range of Reynolds numbers that can be varied to evaluate thermal-dynamic response, and at a reasonable neutron flux value that can be oscillated nearly 7% (up to 100 Hz eventually) to deterministically evaluate sensor transfer functions. Testing has demonstrated that this facility safely performs its desired functions with the current limitation of a 50-Hz maximum neutron flux oscillation speed.