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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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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.
J. C. Nomine, J. F. Ferriot
Nuclear Technology | Volume 115 | Number 2 | August 1996 | Pages 214-227
Technical Paper | Characterization of Radioactive Waste in France / Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35268
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Performing leach tests provides quality assurance and verification that radioactive waste packages are acceptable for final shallow land burial, in accordance with environmental policy. An overview assessment was completed on the leaching tests and on the leachability of various waste forms, regarding both the industrial and the research and development aspects of the leachability and illustrated by several examples. The most important aspects extracted from this overview are as follows: 1. Leaching tests must be performed on all types of package candidates for an ultimate near-surface disposal whatever the waste form: The corresponding results are necessary for the safety assessment demonstration of the disposal site. 2. Representativeness of leached specimens remains to be fully proved, especially when they are small samples (problems of size and also of leached surface). 3. Quality of the waste packages whose type has been accepted should be periodically audited to establish deviations from the quality agreed on. 4. An exhaustive material balance of the released activity in leachates and fixed on surfaces must be established when performing leaching tests, especially for alpha emitters that can become attached to surfaces in the leaching loops. 5. Influence of temperature and pressure on the leaching results have been identified as important factors for cesium leaching of cemented waste. 6. More generally, there has been good progress in leaching knowledge, but the influence of many parameters, such as durability effect on leaching, remains incompletely defined.