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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
A more open future for nuclear research
A growing number of institutional, national, and funder mandates are requiring researchers to make their published work immediately publicly accessible, through either open repositories or open access (OA) publications. In addition, both private and public funders are developing policies, such as those from the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the European Commission, that ask researchers to make publicly available at the time of publication as much of their underlying data and other materials as possible. These, combined with movement in the scientific community toward embracing open science principles (seen, for example, in the dramatic rise of preprint servers like arXiv), demonstrate a need for a different kind of publishing outlet.
P. A. Politzer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 2 | October 2005 | Pages 1170-1177
Technical Paper | DIII-D Tokamak - Radio-Frequency Heating and Current Drive | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1069
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Noninductive current drive is an essential part of the implementation of the DIII-D Advanced Tokamak program. For an efficient steady-state tokamak reactor, the plasma must provide close to 100% bootstrap fraction (fbs). For noninductive operation of DIII-D, current drive by injection of energetic neutral beams [neutral beam current drive (NBCD)] is also important. DIII-D experiments have reached ~80% bootstrap current in stationary discharges without inductive current drive. The remaining current is ~20% NBCD. This is achieved at N [approximately equal to] p > 3, but at relatively high q95 (~10). In lower q95 Advanced Tokamak plasmas, fbs ~ 0.6 has been reached in essentially noninductive plasmas. The phenomenology of high p and N plasmas without current control is being studied. These plasmas display a relaxation oscillation involving repetitive formation and collapse of an internal transport barrier. The frequency and severity of these events increase with increasing , limiting the achievable average and causing modulation of the total current as well as the pressure. Modeling of both bootstrap and NBCD currents is based on neoclassical theory. Measurements of the total bootstrap and NBCD current agree with calculations. A recent experiment based on the evolution of the transient voltage profile after an L-H transition shows that the more recent bootstrap current models accurately describe the plasma behavior. The profiles and the parametric dependences of the local neutral beam-driven current density have not yet been compared with theory.