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Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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!
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Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Guang-Hong Lu, Long Cheng, Kameel Arshad, Yue Yuan, Jun Wang, Shaoyang Qin, Ying Zhang, Kaigui Zhu, Guang-Nan Luo, Haishan Zhou, Bo Li, Jiefeng Wu, Bo Wang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 2 | February 2017 | Pages 177-186
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST16-115
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The linear plasma device Simulator for Tokamak Edge Plasma (STEP) has been constructed at Beihang University, Beijing, to study plasma-material interactions (PMIs) for fusion reactor applications. The device can produce versatile low-energy and high flux plasma in laboratory experiments and is highly cost-effective to replicate the fusion-relevant plasma environment to study PMI processes. The attractive feature of the device is its compact design with a main body dimension of 1.5 × 1.5 × 0.8 m3 including the plasma source, vacuum chamber, magnetic coils, and diagnostics. A longitudinal magnetic field of up to 0.26 T is used to confine the plasma onto the target in an ~1-m-long vacuum tube. It can produce a steady-state plasma of low impinging ion energy of <100 eV, ion flux up to 1022 m−2 · s−1, and fluence of >1026 m−2 per exposure. Various plasma species such as hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and nitrogen can be produced to manipulate PMI processes for different target grades. The STEP device provides an experimental platform to improve the understanding of PMIs, validate computational simulation results, and build a database of fusion material performance and lifetime.