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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Emily Clark, Arnold Lumsdaine, Jean Boscary, Kivanc Ekici, Jeffrey Harris, Dean McGinnis, Jeremy D. Lore, Alan Peacock, Jörg Tretter
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 3 | October 2015 | Pages 635-639
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-954
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Wendelstein 7-X stellarator experiment is scheduled to start operation in mid- 2015, and to move to steady-state operation in 2019. During this steady-state operation, certain plasma scenarios have been shown to produce heat fluxes that exceed the technological limits on the edges of the divertor target elements. The addition of a so-called scraper element (SE) in the ten divertor locations is being investigated in order to reduce the heat load on these divertor target edges. The ANSYS commercial multiphysics package is used to model the performance of the SE under predicted operational conditions. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling is performed to analyze the hydraulic and thermal characteristics of the water-cooled SE under thermal loading using the ANSYS CFX software. This multiphysics modeling is performed for the entire SE to ensure that the total pressure drop in the cooling water circuits, the increase in water temperature, and the peak temperature in the CFC all satisfy the design requirements. Because the contour of the SE surface must be machined to a sub-millimeter precision, it is important to determine the amount of thermal expansion experienced by the entire SE. The thermal-hydraulic results are imported into ANSYS Mechanical to perform the thermal-structural analysis. The thermal deformation of the SE is examined to confirm that the component’s position will remain within its operational limits.