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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Fusion Science and Technology
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Latest News
Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
C.B. Reed, R.C. Haglund, M.E. Miller, J.R. Nasiatka, I.R. Kirillov, A.P. Ogorodnikov, G.V. Preslitski, G.P. Goloubovitch, Zeng Yu Xu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1036-1041
Fusion Blanket and Shield Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963073
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Vanadium/Lithium system has been the recent focus of ANL's Blanket Technology Program, and for the last several years, ANL's Liquid Metal Blanket activities have been carried out in direct support of the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) breeding blanket task area. A key feasibility issue for the ITER Vanadium/Lithium breeding blanket is the development of insulator coatings. Design calculations, Hua and Gohar,1 show that an electrically insulating layer is necessary to maintain an acceptably low magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) pressure drop in the current ITER design. Consequently, the decision was made to convert Argonne's Liquid Metal Experiment (ALEX) from a 200°C NaK facility to a 350°C lithium facility. The upgraded facility was designed to produce MHD pressure drop data, test section voltage distributions, and heat transfer data for mid-scale test sections and blanket mockups at Hartmann numbers (M) and interaction parameters (N) in the range of 103 to 105 in lithium at 350°C.
Following completion of the upgrade work, a short performance test was conducted, followed by two longer, multiple-hour, MHD tests, all at 230°C. The modified ALEX facility performed up to expectations in the testing. MHD pressure drop and test section voltage distributions were collected at Hartmann numbers of 1000.
