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!
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Apr 2025
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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.
Mohamed S. El-Genk, Huimin Xue, Dmitry Paramonov
Nuclear Technology | Volume 105 | Number 1 | January 1994 | Pages 70-86
Technical Paper | Special on Nuclear Criticality Safety / Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34912
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The thermionic transient analysis model is used to simulate the startup of the TOPAZ-II space nuclear power system in orbit. The simulated startup procedures are assumed for the purpose of demonstrating the capabilities of the model and may not represent an accurate account of the actual startup procedures of the TOPAZ-II system. The temperature reactivity feedback effects of the moderator, UO2 fuel, electrodes, coolant, and other components in the core are calculated, and their effects on the thermal and criticality conditions of the reactor are investigated. Also, estimates of the time constants of the temperature reactivity feedback for the UO2fuel and the ZrH moderator during startup, as well as of the total temperature reactivity feedback as a function of the reactor steady-state thermal power, are obtained.
