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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.
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Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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
ARPA-E announces $40 million to develop transmutation technologies for UNF
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
Kristel Crombé, Guido Van Oost
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 169-179
Anomalous Transport | Proceedings of the Tenth Carolus Magnus Summer School on Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13504
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The importance of radial (i.e. perpendicular to the magnetic surface) electric fields was already recognised early in the research on controlled thermonuclear fusion. An initial description of electric field effects in toroidal confinement was given by Budker. Such a configuration with combined magnetic and electric confinement (“magnetoelectric confinement”, where the electric field provides a toroidal equilibrium configuration without rotational transform) was studied by Stix, who suggested that a reactor-grade plasma under magnetoelectric confinement (electric fields of order 1 MV/cm) may reach a quasi-steady-state with ambipolar loss of electrons and some suprathermal ions (e.g. 3.5 MeV -particles). Experiments such as on the Electric Field Bumpy Torus EFBT provided quite favourable scaling for particle confinement. The possible importance of radial electric fields for transport was in the past repeatedly established. Since the early days the plasma potential has been measured in tokamaks such as ST, TM-4 and ISX-B, but because no significant effects of the radial electric field Er on plasma transport were observed under the machine conditions at that time, no further research was conducted in tokamaks.