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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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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.
Arántzazu Cuadra, José-Luis Gago, Francesc Reventós
Nuclear Technology | Volume 146 | Number 1 | April 2004 | Pages 41-48
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3485
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Culminating in the participation of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations/Nuclear Science Committee pressurized water reactor (PWR) main-steam-line-break (MSLB) benchmark, we present the analysis with RELAP/PARCS of a double-ended MSLB assumed to occur in the Ascó nuclear power plant (NPP). This Spanish NPP, a two-unit 1000-MW(electric) PWR plant of Westinghouse design, has been in normal operation since 1983. The utility uses the RELAP model developed by its analysts to study transients that occurred (or postulated), following its own procedures, giving response to operation-related issues, as well as serving licensing and training purposes. The model is well validated. The present study tests the RELAP/PARCS model of the Asco NPP and, in particular, tests the coupling between the neutronics and the thermal hydraulics; its focus is not licensing or validation.
