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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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.
S. Sunder
Nuclear Technology | Volume 144 | Number 2 | November 2003 | Pages 259-273
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3443
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The relationship between molybdenum oxidation state and iodine volatility in nuclear fuel was investigated using high-temperature Knudsen cell-mass spectroscopy. It was observed that the ratio of the intensities of molecular iodine ions I2+ and CsI+ in the Knudsen cell-mass spectroscopic experiments can be used to investigate the iodine volatility in fuel under different conditions. The experiments show that the iodine volatility is similar in systems consisting of CsI alone, CsI/UO2, and CsI/UO2/MoOx (with molybdenum in oxidation states 0, 2, and 4). The iodine volatility is much higher, however, in CsI/UO2/MoO3 systems (with molybdenum in oxidation state = 6). The iodine volatility in the fuel increases significantly if oxidation of the molybdenum goes to the MoO3 stage. The increase in the iodine volatility is caused by the formation of elemental iodine from cesium iodide. It is concluded from these measurements that the oxidation of the fuel to the UO2.2 will substantially increase the volatilization of fission product iodine. An analysis of the literature data suggests that the enhanced iodine volatilization process may be initiated when the fuel is oxidized to UO2.02.
