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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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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.
Salim N. Jahshan, Thomas J. McGeehan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 106 | Number 3 | June 1994 | Pages 350-359
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34965
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An analytical evaluation is made of the pressurized water reactor (PWR) in-core performance of recycled light water reactor fuel that has been Atomics International reduction oxidation (AIROX) reprocessed and reenriched with fissile materials. The neutronics performance is shown to lie within the neutronics performance of existing high-performance and high-burnup fuels. Three AIROX-recycled fuels are compared with a high-burnup virgin fuel and an equivalent mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. The AIROX-recycled fuel neutronics performance lies consistently between the virgin and the MOX fuel for both the pin power peaking and the reactivity response characteristics in PWRs. Among the attractive features of AIROX-recycled fuel is that it can optimize fissile and fertile fuel use, minimize final fuel disposal impact on the environment, and provide energy in the process of denaturing weapons-grade fissile materials. The fuel material performance may be anticipated from high-burnup virgin fuel and from MOX fuel performance. Recommendations for lead rod testing and for optimization of the AIROX-processing and resintering techniques are made.
