ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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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June 2025
Nuclear Technology
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May 2025
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.
Giuseppe Modolo, Reinhard Odoj
Nuclear Technology | Volume 117 | Number 1 | January 1997 | Pages 80-86
Technical Paper | Enrichment and Reprocessing System | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35337
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
According to the current state of the art in reprocessing technology, the 129I contained in spent fuel elements can be completely transferred to the dissolver off-gas and efficiently adsorbed on AgNO3-impregnated silica (AC 6120). For future transmutation, the 129I should again be separated selectively and as completely as possible (>99%) from the AC 6120 adsorption matrix. Experimental studies show that a quantitative recovery of the iodine is possible by wet chemical and thermal processes. Extraction experiments using iodine-loaded AC 6120 with sodium sulfide solution provide recovery rates of 99 ± 1%. Reduction with hydrogen at 500°C, in which gaseous HI was liberated, provided recovery rates of >99%. After the separation of iodine, the reduced AC 6120 can be used again as an adsorbent for molecular iodine.
