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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
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.
F. F. Fondeur, W. R. Wilmarth, T. B. Peters, S. D. Fink
Nuclear Technology | Volume 151 | Number 3 | September 2005 | Pages 297-302
Technical Paper | Radioisotopes | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3652
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The stability of mercury fulminate under gamma-ray irradiation and in a high-alkalinity sludge environment was determined. Both differential scanning calorimetry and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used to characterize mercury fulminate. Mercury fulminate completely decomposed in a gamma-ray source (0.86 Mrad/h) after a dose of 208 Mrad. This exposure equates to ~2.4 to 4 yr in Savannah River Site tanks. Mercury fulminate decomposed in contact with high-alkalinity wet sludge. This study suggests that any mercury fulminate or closely related energetic species decomposed long ago if it ever formed in the tank farm.
