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
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
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.
Carl M. Stoots, James E. O'Brien, Keith Condie, Lisa Moore-McAteer, Gregory Housley, Joseph J. Hartvigsen, J. Stephen Herring
Nuclear Technology | Volume 166 | Number 1 | April 2009 | Pages 32-42
Technical Paper | Special Issue on Nuclear Hydrogen Production, Control, and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A6966
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The High-Temperature Electrolysis Integrated Laboratory-Scale experiment was designed at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and Ceramatec during 2006 and early 2007 and constructed in the spring and summer of 2007. A "half-module," two stacks of 60 cells each, was tested at Ceramatec for 2040 h in June-September 2006 and a full module, four stacks of 60 cells each, was completed in March 2007. Initial shakedown testing of the INL Integrated Laboratory-Scale (ILS) experimental facility commenced on August 22, 2007. Heatup of the first ILS module started at 4:10 PM on September 24, 2007, and ran for 420 h. The test average H2 production rate was ~1.3 Nm3/h (Normal cubic meters per hour, where Normal conditions are 273 K and 1 atm) (0.116 kg H2/h), with a peak measured H2 production rate of over 2 Nm3/h (0.179 kg H2/h). Significant module performance degradation was observed over the first 250 h, after which no further degradation was noted for the remainder of the test. Once all test objectives had been successfully met, the test was terminated in a controlled fashion.