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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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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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.
Carles De Las Cuevas, Lourdes Miralles, Juan José Pueyo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 114 | Number 3 | June 1996 | Pages 325-336
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35237
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Laboratory irradiations at a constant dose rate of 15 kGy/h at 100°C have enabled the study of the radiation damage in several types of rock salt. Total doses ranged from 20 kGy to 48.9 MGy. Two methods (optical absorption and release of hydrogen by reaction with water) have been used to measure the concentration of radiation-induced defects. Their concentration was compared with the dose and the chemical and mineral composition of rock salt samples, using multivariate statistical techniques. The results show a loglinear increase in the concentration of colloidal sodium with dose, whereas the F-centers concentration remains nearly constant. Moreover, there is a clear influence of the mineral composition of the rock salt in the radiation damage, leading to defect concentrations varying over one order of magnitude for the same dose. Rock salt with small amounts of accessory minerals presents the lowest defect concentration. Experimental data have been compared with the theoretical predictions obtained by the Jain-Lidiard model. For doses higher than 1 MGy, both values are of the same order of magnitude.
