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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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.
Dong H. Nguyen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 106 | Number 3 | June 1994 | Pages 360-372
Technical Paper | Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34966
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium gas, normally in sealed containers, will be present in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) facilities conducting fusion energy research. A probability of tritium release, however small, exists in these facilities. Once released, tritium can back-diffuse against ventilation flow to contaminate other areas of the facility. Tritium can also be released to the environment by exhaust blowers. The problem of back-diffusion of tritium released in a typical DOE facility was examined as a function of flow rates of the ventilation system. The source term (release to the environment) in the emergency ventilation flow was also calculated. The consequences to personnel in the release room and in an adjacent corridor due to back-diffusion were determined. It was shown that for credible release scenarios, the consequences in the adjacent corridor from tritium back-diffusion were negligible. Higher doses in the release room can be avoided by well-planned emergency evacuation procedures. The source term was calculated, but the on- and off-site consequences were not determined.