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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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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.
E. Royer, E. Raimond, D. Caruge
Nuclear Technology | Volume 142 | Number 2 | May 2003 | Pages 154-165
Technical Paper | OECD/NRC MSLB Benchmark | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3381
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency Main Steam Line Break (MSLB) benchmark provides a comparison of state-of-the-art and best-estimate models used to compute reactivity accidents. A comprehensive study has been carried out by Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique and Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire with the CATHARE, CRONOS2, and FLICA4 codes. The effect of mixing between primary loops in the core vessel is analyzed, then zero-dimensional and three-dimensional (3-D) kinetics are compared, and finally, the effect of the core thermal-hydraulic model is presented. The aim of this analysis is to assess the 3-D effects in the MSLB accident and to explain the return-to-power occurrence.
