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Division Spotlight
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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.
Peter Taylor, William H. Hocking,† Lawrence H. Johnson, Roderick J. McEachern, Sham Sunder
Nuclear Technology | Volume 116 | Number 2 | November 1996 | Pages 222-230
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35302
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Issues relevant to the performance of irradiated (Th,Pu)O2 as a waste form for geological disposal are briefly reviewed. Fuels of this type are among those being considered for burning plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons in power reactors, including Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) systems. The high chemical stability and low aqueous solubility of thoria make this type offuel attractive as a waste form. In contrast with UO2 fuel, the inertness of thoria to oxidation dominates most of the chemical issues of fuel disposal. The overall performance of a thoria-based fuel waste form is likely to be determined by the “instant” release of the gap inventories of mobile fission products such as 129I. This in turn will be controlled largely by the inreactor power history and probably also by details of fuel fabrication. Limited experience with thoria-based fuels [chiefly (Th, U)O2] indicates that, for given power and burnup levels, gas releases can be substantially lower than with UO2 fuels. The gap and grain-boundary inventories of fission products are expected to be correspondingly low. A fabrication route involving molecular-level mixing (e.g., sol-gelprocess) would be preferable to powder blending, because microscopic heterogeneities in the fuel might adversely affect the retention of fission products. Pilot-scale irradiation, postirradiation examination, and leaching studies are required to support this preliminary assessment. Other issues that need to be addressed include impurity specifications (to minimize formation of long-lived activation products) and criticality and safeguards issues that might influence the design of fuel-handling facilities.