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
Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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 Technology
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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.
Kozo Katsuyama, Koji Maeda, Tsuyoshi Nagamine, Hirotaka Furuya
Nuclear Technology | Volume 169 | Number 1 | January 2010 | Pages 73-80
Technical Paper | Radiation Measurements and Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9344
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three-dimensional X-ray computer tomography (CT) images were successfully taken of a fast breeder reactor fuel assembly that had been irradiated to high burnup. The interior and outside of the fuel assembly can be clearly observed on any cross section from any angle. These images make it possible to analyze deformations and microstructural changes in the fuel pins and abnormalities in the fuel assembly. An analysis was made for 127 central voids, i.e., one in each fuel pin of the traverse cross section, and the void sizes were tentatively related to the linear heat rating. Compared with conventional nondestructive and destructive postirradiation examinations (PIEs), this X-ray CT technique has great advantages including acquiring large numbers of PIE data in a short time, reducing PIE costs, reducing the amounts of radioactive waste generation, and physically protecting nuclear materials.
