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.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2025
Nuclear Technology
September 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
IAEA again raises global nuclear power projections
Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.
IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.
In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.
D. A. Ehst, J. N. Brooks, Y. Cha, K. Evans, Jr., A. M. Hassanein, S. Kim, S. Majumdar, B. Misra, H. C. Stevens
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 727-730
Power Reactor Studies | Proceedings of the Sixth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (San Francisco, California, March 3-7, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A40124
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Consideration of burn cycle options for commercial tokamaks shows that there is substantial motivation to achieve steady state operation. This is partly due to longer replacement periods for first wall and impurity control components, but, in addition, large cost savings are found when magnets, power supplies, and the energy transfer system are not frequently pulsed. The hybrid burn cycle, with a combination of ohmic and noninductive current drive, does not significantly improve the economics of ohmically-driven commercial reactors with large major radius. However, an INTOR-class device has a critically small hole in the doughnut, and we find for this size tokamak that the hybrid cycle is preferred over ohmically-driven operation.