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Division Spotlight
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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.
Tatsuhiko Sato, Daiki Satoh, Akira Endo, Nobuhiro Shigyo, Hiroshi Yasuda, Masashi Takada, Kazuaki Yajima, Takashi Nakamura
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 1 | October 2009 | Pages 113-117
Dose/Dose Rate | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (Part 1) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9109
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To improve radiation safety in high-energy accelerator facilities, the authors have been developing the new radiation dose monitor device DARWIN: Dose monitoring system Applicable to various Radiations with WIde energy raNges. DARWIN is composed of (a) a phoswitch-type scintillation detector, which consists of liquid organic scintillator BC501A coupled with ZnS(Ag) scintillation sheets doped with 6Li, and (b) a data acquisition (DAQ) system for digital analysis of the waveform of the scintillator signals. The DAQ system was recently updated in order to apply DARWIN in monitoring dose rates in radiation fields having time structure, introducing an originally developed module based on a field-programmable gate array. To examine the performance of DARWIN placed in radiation fields composed of varieties of particles over wide energy ranges, the authors mounted DARWIN on a jet aircraft and measured neutron, photon, muon, electron, and positron dose rates at high altitudes. The measured dose rates excellently agreed with the corresponding data calculated by EXPACS over a wide altitude range. This agreement indicates the applicability of DARWIN to dose monitoring in complex radiation fields such as those in high-energy accelerator facilities and aircrafts.
