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
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
August 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
New company has big nuclear plans
The recent startup The Nuclear Company announced plans this month to deploy a series of nuclear reactors by the mid-2030s using a “design-once, build-many approach.”
The venture-capital-funded firm wants to use proven, licensed technology and target sites that already have some level of licensing approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build enough reactors to produce 6 gigawatts of electricity across the country.
J. Sheffield, R. A. Dory, S. M. Cohn, J. G. Delene, L. Parsly, D. E. T. F. Ashby, W. T. Reiersen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 9 | Number 2 | March 1986 | Pages 199-249
Overview | Economic | doi.org/10.13182/FST9-2-199
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A generic reactor model is used to examine the economic viability of electricity generation by magnetic fusion. The simple model uses components that are representative of those used in previous reactor studies of deuterium-tritium burning tokamaks, stellarators, bumpy tori, reversed-field pinches, and tandem mirrors. Conservative costing assumptions are made. The generic reactor is not a tokamak but rather it is intended to emphasize what is common to all magnetic fusion reactors. The reactor uses a superconducting toroidal coil set to produce the dominant magnetic field. To this extent, it is not as good an approximation to systems, such as the rev er sed-field pinch, in which the main field is produced by a plasma current. The main output of the study is the cost of electricity as a function of the weight and size of the fusion core — blanket, shield, structure, and coils. The model shows that a 1200-MW(electric) power plant with a fusion core weight of ∼10000 tonnes should be competitive in the future with fission and fossil plants. Sensitivity studies that vary the assumptions show that this result is not sensitively dependent on any given assumption. Of particular importance is the result that this scale of fusion reactor may be realized with only moderate advances in physics and technology capabilities.