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
Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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.
Attila Rácz
Nuclear Technology | Volume 104 | Number 1 | October 1993 | Pages 128-146
Technical Paper | Reactor Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34875
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During the last two decades, Kalman filter-based process monitoring techniques have been rediscovered and widely applied in different areas of control and signal validation. When the physical model of the underlying system is known, the Kalman filter is sensitive enough to indicate small, unexpected changes either in the plant or in the measurement models. Although the innovation process that is generated by Kalman filters contains all the necessary statistical information for detecting certain malfunctions, performance degradation, or off-normal operation conditions, skillful hypothesis testing methods are needed for proper interpretation of the innovation’s behavior. The classical binary sequential probability ratio test (SPRT’), developed by Wald, is an optimal tool to judge between two concurring hypotheses. For more than two alternatives, the multiple-hypothesis testing method, the so-called M-ary SPRT, is recommended. In many cases, the situation cannot be represented as simply as a binary problem, however, and the M-ary scheme would be an overcomplication. For an illustration, consider leakage detection when the exact amount of the loss is not of interest. In such a case, the problem can be treated by a properly chosen binary test, and Wald’s classical SPRT framework can be applied. Thus, any binary SPRT and computer code can be used without any modification.