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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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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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.
T. Radon, E. Kozlova, G. Fehrenbacher, H. Geissel, K. Sümmerer, H. Weick, M. Winkler
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 2 | November 2009 | Pages 492-496
Shielding | 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 Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9231
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Super-FRS is designed as a versatile partially superconducting fragment separator for the planned international Facility for Antiprotons and Ion Research. It will be able to separate all kinds of nuclear projectile fragments of primary heavy-ion beams including uranium with energies of up to 1.5 GeV/u and intensities of up to 1012 particles/s. The primary beam power of up to 50 kW has to be dumped in six shaped beam catchers in accordance with the ion optical setting of the separator in order not to enter the main separator, which will have accordingly weaker shielding. A key issue for such a high-power facility is the activation of several components and thus their access by maintenance personnel. Both the prompt and the residual dose due to activation are calculated by means of the Monte Carlo particle transport code FLUKA.The biological shielding in the target area will be realized by massive iron blocks (thickness [approximate] 2 m) around the beam tube and the magnets. This will be surrounded by up to 6 m of concrete in order to reduce the dose rates below the design value of 0.5 Sv/h, which is in agreement with the German radiation protection ordinance for public access. A dedicated maintenance channel is foreseen in which the residual dose rates are tolerable for short time access after a certain cooling time.