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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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.
Ernestas Narkunas, Arturas Smaizys, Povilas Poskas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 2 | November 2009 | Pages 533-536
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) / Decontamination/Decommissioning | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9239
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the two RBMK-1500 reactor units of the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania was shut down at the end of 2004 and is currently under decommissioning. The knowledge of radioactive inventory of irradiated materials is very important in the planning of the decommissioning activities and is essential for predicting the radiological impact to personnel during dismantling and management of these materials. The generated radionuclides and their radioactivities in the shield and support plates of the Ignalina Unit 1 RBMK-1500 reactor were modeled in this paper. The reactor shield and support plates, which are made of steel, become radioactive because of intensive neutron irradiation, as they are located close to the bottom and the top of the reactor active core.The assessment of radioactivity levels in shield and support plates was performed using the computer code ORIGEN-S. The list of radionuclides, their radioactivity levels, and the radioactivity dependence on the initial impurity content and cooling time were assessed in this paper. It was found that 3H, 14C, 36Cl, 55Fe, 60Co, 59Ni, and 63Ni are the main contributors to the radioactivity of the shield and support plates.
