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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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.
Shih-Jen Wang, Kwang-Sheng Chiang, Show-Chyuan Chiang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 146 | Number 2 | May 2004 | Pages 199-205
Technical Note | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3498
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reactor coolant system (RCS) injection is an important strategy for severe accident management of a pressurized water reactor (PWR) system. Maanshan is a typical Westinghouse PWR nuclear power plant (NPP) with large, dry containment. The severe accident management guideline (SAMG) of Maanshan NPP is developed based on the Westinghouse Owners Group (WOG) SAMG.The purpose of this work is to analyze the RCS injection strategy of PWR system in an overheated core condition. Power is assumed recovered as the vessel water level drops to the bottom of active fuel. The Modular Accident Analysis Program version 4.0.4 (MAAP4) code is chosen as a tool for analysis. A postulated station blackout sequence for Maanshan NPP is cited as a reference case for this analysis. The hot leg creep rupture occurs during the mitigation action with immediate injection after power recovery according to WOG SAMG, which is not desired. This phenomenon is not considered while developing the WOG SAMG. Two other RCS injection methods are analyzed by using MAAP4. The RCS injection strategy is modified in the Maanshan SAMG. These results can be applied for typical PWR NPPs.
