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Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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.
M. García, J. Sanz, P. Sauvan, F. Ogando, D. López, A. Mayoral, V. Blideanu, C. Moreno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 1 | October 2009 | Pages 132-138
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-A9113
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Before starting with the construction of the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility, the objective of the Engineering Validation and Engineering Design Activities (EVEDA) phase will be to demonstrate feasibility of design. For this EVEDA prototype, analysis of the dose rate evolution during the beam-off phase is necessary for radioprotection and maintenance feasibility purposes. The key points for determining the dose rates of the beam-off phase are on one hand the neutron source produced along the accelerator beam line and on the other hand the deuteron losses giving rise to this neutron source.A new methodology to compute the neutron source coming from the deuteron interactions with the intercepting material as well as with the deuterium previously implanted has been developed. This new procedure consists of evaluation of the low-energy deuteron-induced neutron source that is not calculated by most transport codes and assessment of the deuterium concentration evolution in the material, which is generally not taken into account in this type of calculation. The impact of this new approach on the neutron source and dose rate results is very relevant.In addition, different sets of deuteron losses computed during the last 3 yr have been compared and used for neutron activation and dose rate calculations. The effect of the deuteron losses upon neutron source production and residual dose rates in the vicinity of the accelerator components is evaluated, and implications for hands-on maintenance activities are discussed. The impact of the differences in the sets of deuteron losses has been found to be very important for dose rate evaluations. Using the most recent deuteron loss information, we obtain dose rate values more than one order of magnitude lower than those obtained using the former data.
