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Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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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.
Yuh-Ming Ferng, Chien-Hsiung Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 116 | Number 1 | October 1996 | Pages 19-33
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35309
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The simulation capabilities of RELAP5/MOD3 are analyzed and assessed in comparison with the IIST experiments conducted to investigate the system response to the loss of the residual heat removal (RHR) system during midloop operation. Two IIST experiments are simulated; a one-loop test under closed system conditions and a three-loop test with a vent at the top of the pressurizer. Once the RHR cooling system is lost and if alternate heat sinks are not established in time, the primary system will be heated up by the decay power, causing core boiling, system pressurization, and potential core uncovery and fuel heatup. The predicted responses of system parameters by the current model show reasonable agreement with the experimental data. These key parameters consist of the system pressure transient, temperature histories, and variation in the active heat transfer length within the steam generator. The liquid flooding in the pressurizer and the steam generator can also be captured in the current simulation. A periodic fill-and-down cycle developed in the steam generator U-tubes has been observed in the IIST measured data of oscillatory differential pressure across the steam generator. This phenomenon is not simulated in the calculation. However, the calculated differential pressure will follow the experimental trend and agree qualitatively with the measured data averaged over one fill-and-down cycle. As shown in the comparison of the calculated and experimental data, the overall system responses to the loss-of-RHR system event during midloop operation can be appropriately simulated by the current RELAP5/MOD3 model.