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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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.
I. Kodeli, A. Milocco, A. Trkov
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 965-969
Miscellaneous | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (PART 3) / Radiation Measurements and Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9334
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several benchmark experiments performed in the past using the time-of-flight technique are stored in the SINBAD database distributed by the Nuclear Energy Agency Data Bank (e.g., OKTAVIAN, FNS, and IPPE benchmarks). These benchmarks proved to be useful for the validation of the computer codes and nuclear data evaluations, but some expertise is required from the users for the proper modeling and interpretation of the problems. The iron spheres experiment carried out in the 14-MeV facility at IPPE, Obninsk, Russia, was proposed as one of the problems in the scope of the Coordinated Network for Radiation Dosimetry (CONRAD) project sponsored by the European Commission within its 6th Framework Programme. The objective was to test the skills of the participants in the use of the computer codes and the nuclear data but also to obtain feedback information on how suitable the information contained in SINBAD is for the nowadays users and the computer codes. Outcomes of the intercomparison provide guidance for the future compilations in order to facilitate the use of the experimental data.