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Division Spotlight
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.
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.
Josef Bestele, Klaus Trambauer, Johann-Dietrich Schubert
Nuclear Technology | Volume 117 | Number 1 | January 1997 | Pages 109-123
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35339
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit is developing, in cooperation with the Institut für Kernenergetik und Energiesysteme, Stuttgart, the system code Analysis of Thermalhydraulics of Leaks and Transients with Core Degradation (ATHLET-CD). The code consists of detailed models of the thermal hydraulics of the reactor coolant system. This thermo-fluid dynamics module is coupled with modules describing the early phase of the core degradation, like cladding deformation, oxidation and melt relocation, and the release and transport of fission products. The assessment of the code is being done by the analysis of separate effect tests, integral tests, and plant events. The code will be applied to the verification of severe accident management procedures. The out-of-pile test CORA-13 was conducted by Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in their CORA test facility. The test consisted of two phases, a heatup phase and a quench phase. At the beginning of the quench phase, a sharp peak in the hydrogen generation rate was observed. Both phases of the test have been calculated with the system code ATHLET-CD. Special efforts have been made to simulate the heat losses and the flow distribution in the test facility and the thermal hydraulics during the quench phase. In addition to previous calculations, the material relocation and the quench phase have been modeled. The temperature increase during the heatup phase, the starting time of the temperature escalation, and the maximum temperatures have been calculated correctly. At the beginning of the quench phase, an increased hydrogen generation rate has been calculated as measured in the experiment.