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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.
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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
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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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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.
Christofer M. Mowry, Israel Nir
Nuclear Technology | Volume 109 | Number 3 | March 1995 | Pages 412-428
Technical Paper | Reactor Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35089
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Boiling water reactor cores are susceptible to instabilities, which generate power oscillations. Specific reactor operating practices can provide a mechanism for control of the instability phenomenon. An axial separation of the core into a single-phase region and a two-phase region resolves the influence of axial flux shapes on core stability. This separation provides the means to derive a core stability control that ensures significant reactor stability margin. The control is achieved by maintaining the core average bulk coolant saturation elevation above a predetermined axial plane. The control can be reliably and efficiently implemented during reactor operations. Analysis demonstrates that variations in parameters important to stability have only secondary influences on stability margin when the control is in effect. Actual plant experience with a large commercial boiling water reactor confirms the capabilities of this stability control in an operational setting.
