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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
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
First astatine-labeled compound shipped in the U.S.
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
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.