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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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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.
Chaitanyamoy Ganguly, Parameshwar Venkappa Hegde, Gyan Chand Jain
Nuclear Technology | Volume 105 | Number 3 | March 1994 | Pages 346-354
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34935
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Around 200 kg of (Pu0.55 U0.45)C fuel pellets of relatively low density (86 ± 2% theoretical density) would be used as a driver fuel in the second core of the Fast Breeder Test Reactor in India. The current paper summarizes the production experience of the initial 15 kg of these fuel pellets following the “vacuum carbothermic synthesis” of tableted oxide-graphite powder mixture followed by “cold-pelletization” of carbide powder and “sintering.” The alterations made in the process equipment, radiation shielding arrangements, and fabrication parameters have been highlighted. The carbothermic synthesis and sintering were carried out in batches of 600 g and 1 kg, respectively. The percentage recovery of sintered pellets in all the batches was >90%. The resintering tests of pellets showed only marginal change in sintered density, ensuring minimum in-pile densification.
