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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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.
Alireza Behbahani, James N. Anno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 1 | July 1995 | Pages 70-79
Technical Paper | Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35145
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Concern about possible radiation damage from the increasing exposure of memory disks to mild radiation environments prompted an experimental investigation into this matter. A series of programmed memory disks were exposed at near room temperatures and in an air environment to several types and intensities of radiation, with stored data retrieved before and after exposure. Initial separate exposures to alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron radiation were in the range of 5 to 15 mrad, the “upper limit” of radiation exposure that might be expected in common usage situations. Finding no permanent damage, the disks were then subjected to high-level 60Co gamma radiation to total doses up to 20 Mrad, again with no detectable postirradiation effects. Finally, the disks were subjected to high-level neutrons (up to 2.86 x 1011 n/cm2 total thermal neutron fluence) as well as to gammas in a research reactor. Postulated radiation damage mechanisms apparently were not consequential. It is concluded that in the range investigated, radiation damage to memory disks is not significant to their ability to function.