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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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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.
Shigeyuki Nakanishi, Takusaburo Hosoya, Shigenobu Kubo, Shoji Kotake, Misao Takamatsu, Takafumi Aoyama, Iwao Ikarimoto, Jungo Kato, Yoshio Shimakawa, Kiyoshi Harada
Nuclear Technology | Volume 170 | Number 1 | April 2010 | Pages 181-188
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 2008 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants / Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9456
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) self-actuated shutdown system (SASS) is a passive safety feature by which control rods are inserted by gravity force and the rods would be detached by a rise in coolant temperature under anticipated transient without scram (ATWS) conditions. Various out-of-pile tests have already been carried out to investigate the basic characteristics of SASS, and a demonstration test of the holding stability under reactor operation conditions has been performed, where a function test of the driving system to reconnect and pull out the control rod has been done in the experimental reactor JOYO. Element irradiation tests have also been conducted to confirm that there is no impact from irradiation. The effectiveness of SASS for the reference core design of the Japan SFR (JSFR) has been evaluated through all ATWS types. As a result, it is ensured that JSFR will have a reliable passive shutdown system.
