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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Researchers use one-of-a-kind expertise and capabilities to test fuels of tomorrow
At the Idaho National Laboratory Hot Fuel Examination Facility, containment box operator Jake Maupin moves a manipulator arm into position around a pencil-thin nuclear fuel rod. He is preparing for a procedure that he and his colleagues have practiced repeatedly in anticipation of this moment in the hot cell.
J. Reece Roth
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 258-263
Alternate Fuels | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22878
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A survey of large scale DT tokamak design studies shows that the confinement time required to achieve self-sustaining operation can be much less than that predicted by the recently reported neo-Alcator scaling. The excess containment is, in most cases, more than an order of magnitude larger than that required for a steady-state burning plasma. If neo-Alcator sealing remained valid to reactor conditions, means must be found to reduce confinement times to levels consistent with steady-state operation. The problem of excess confinement has not been addressed adequately in the available literature. A positive aspect is that this excess confinement is likely to be available without engineering or physics penalty. A constructive use to which this excess confinement can be put is to burn advanced fusion fuels instead of the DT reaction, and thereby reap the practical benefits of reduced energetic neutron fluxes.