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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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February 2025
Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Thomas Rummel, W7-X Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 387-396
Plenary II | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 2) Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A19128
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) experimental device is presently being built at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany.The modularity of the machine is achieved using five identical modules which form a torus of 16 meters outer diameter. Each module consists of a plasma vessel, ten non-planar main field coils, four planar coils and an outer vessel sector with ports. To achieve steady-state operation, the coils are superconducting. Two different plasma heating systems, ECRH and NBI, are planned for the first operation phase of W7-X.Module-based assembly is a new approach for large fusion machines. There are three main assembly steps of the core machine. First, half-modules are assembled from a plasma vessel section, five non-planar and two planar coils and related support structures. In the second step, two half-modules are connected to form a module. Then the five modules are connected, after which the outer vessel is closed.The paper reports on about the latest progress in assembly, highlighting the most challenging tasks, describes future work leading to the start of W7-X commissioning in 2014.
