ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
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.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
TerraPower begins U.K. regulatory approval process
Seattle-based TerraPower signaled its interest this week in building its Natrium small modular reactor in the United Kingdom, the company announced.
TerraPower sent a letter to the U.K.’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, formally establishing its intention to enter the U.K. generic design assessment (GDA) process. This is TerraPower’s first step in deployment of its Natrium technology—a 345-MW sodium fast reactor coupled with a molten salt energy storage unit—on the international stage.
Osamu Mitarai, Akira Hirose, Harvey M. Skarsgard
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 20 | Number 3 | November 1991 | Pages 285-294
Technical Paper | Fusion Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29669
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An alternating current (ac) tokamak reactor with ohmic ignition and long pulses due to bootstrap current is proposed as a simple and quasi-continuous fusion power plant. An ohmic plasma current of 23 MA with a high toroidal field of ∼10 T in the Alternating Current Tokamak Reactor-Upgrade (ACTR-U) (10-m major radius and 2-m minor radius) provides the ohmic ignition. After entering the ignition regime, the plasma current is reduced by one-half to enhance the bootstrap current with a high-beta poloidal field (βp ∼ 2) to prolong the pulse length. When the ohmic transformer reaches the maximum flux, the plasma current is ramped down and reversed; ac operation follows. We thus demonstrate that an ohmic transformer alone is in principle sufficient for a quasi-continuous deuterium-tritium fusion reactor.