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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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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Christmas Night
Twas the night before Christmas when all through the houseNo electrons were flowing through even my mouse.
All devices were plugged in by the chimney with careWith the hope that St. Nikola Tesla would share.
C. C. Baker, D. A. Ehst, J. N. Brooks, K. Evans, Jr.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 709-716
Fusion Reactor Design—I | Proceedings of the Seveth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Reno, Nevada, June 15–19, 1986) | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24825
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A number of advances in plasma physics and engineering promise to greatly improve the reactor prospects of tokamaks. The following features, in particular, have been examined: (a) large aspect ratio (A ≈ 6), which may ease maintenance; (b) high beta (β ≳ 0.20) without indentation, which brings the maximum toroidal field down to about 7 T; (c) low toroidal current (I ≈ 5MA), which reduces the cost of the current drive and equilibrium field system; and (d) steady state operation with current density control via fast and slow wave current drive. The key to high beta operation with low toroidal current lies in utilizing second stability regime equilibria with the required current distributions produced by an appropriate selection of wave driver frequencies and power spectra. The ray tracing and current drive calculation is self-consistent with the actual magnetic fields produced in the plasma. In addition to matching desirable high-beta equilibria, this method is capable of producing a large variety of new equilibria, many of which look attractive. The impurity control activities in TPSS have emphasized the self-pumping concept as applied to using the entire first wall or “slot” limiters. The blanket design effort has emphasized liquid metal and Flibe concepts. The reference concept is a liquid lithium/vanadium, self-cooled configuration. Overall, there exists a number of major design improvements which will substantially improve the attractiveness of tokamak reactors.