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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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.
Héctor René Vega-Carrillo, Eduardo Gallego, Alfredo Lorente
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 2 | November 2009 | Pages 359-363
Neutron Measurements | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (Part 2) / Radiation Measurements and Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9209
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Using Monte Carlo methods the response matrix of a Bonner sphere spectrometer with a 6LiI scintillator has been calculated. The response functions were calculated for the bare detector and for polyethylene spheres 5.08, 7.62, 12.7, 20.32, 25.4, and 30.48 cm in diameter. Twenty-three beams of monoenergetic neutrons were used as sources in the energy interval from 0.025 eV to 100 MeV. The response functions were interpolated to energy points of those calculated in earlier literature works and compared with two response functions reported in the literature; good agreement was found from this comparison. The main differences were found for neutrons with energies higher than 20 MeV and, to a minor extent, for low-energy neutrons as well. These differences are mainly attributed to the cross-section libraries utilized in the different studies.
