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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!
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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.
Didier Haas, Alain Vandergheynst, Jean van Vliet, Robert Lorenzelli, Jean-Louis Nigon
Nuclear Technology | Volume 106 | Number 1 | April 1994 | Pages 60-82
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34950
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Plutonium recycling in light water reactors (LWRs) has progressively become a fact. Over 200 t of mixedoxide (MOX) fuel have been produced in the COGEMA and BELGONUCLÉAIRE plants in the last 7 yr. Fuel loaded in European reactors—mainly MIMAS fuel—is presenting satisfactory in-core behavior and performance. Fuel fabrication technology and operation experience of the BELGONUCLÉAIRE Po Dessel Plant (35 tonne HM/yr) are reviewed. Backfitting of the Complexe de Fabrication de Cadarache (CFCa) plant to MOX fabrication and recent fabrication progress are also addressed. The MELOX plant erected by COGEMA in Marcoule (South France) is a major commitment to provide the utilities with important additional plutonium recycling by the mid-1990s. This second generation plant has been designed to currently produce high plutoniumcontent MOX fuel and recycle degraded plutonium originating from high-burnup LWR UO2 fuels.
