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Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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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
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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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Latest News
Judge temporarily blocks DOE’s move to slash university research funding
A group of universities led by the American Association of Universities (AAU) acted swiftly to oppose a policy action by the Department of Energy that would cut the funds it pays to universities for the indirect costs of research under DOE grants. The group filed suit Monday, April 14, challenging a what it termed a “flagrantly unlawful action” that could “devastate scientific research at America’s universities.”
By Wednesday, the U.S. District Court judge hearing the case issued a temporary restraining order effective nationwide, preventing the DOE from implementing the policy or terminating any existing grants.
Alfred Y. Wong
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 103-110
Topical Review Lectures | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963421
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a concept of coupling energy to fusion plasmas by spatially distributed and programmable compact energetic neutral beams. These energetic sources are pencil neutral beams with energy from 1 KeV up to 4 MeV. They are formed from the electron transfer between accelerated positive and negative ions in well-proven Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) structures. Symmetry in positive and negative ion plasmas favors the trapping of both species in adjacent potential wells of a travelling wave. Since this source does not require a large charge-exchange cell and high voltage sources, its compact size allows it to be positioned at multiple locations around the fusion device with various angles of injection.
The motivation for this paper is to usher a new paradigm in the heating, fueling and diagnosis of fusion devices. Large fusion device of meter scale size will need energetic beams to penetrate to its center for heating, fueling and diagnostics. Kinetic instabilities might require ion injection in specific regions of phase space at particular times. Since the beam density scales favorably with decreasing size, we have utilized advances in computer and micro-fabrication and nanotechnology to design a multiple module beam injection system. This approach makes it possible to program each beam module such that beam injection is triggered by special events inside a dynamic fusion plasma.
Current research devices will need inexpensive neutral beams to test their concepts at reasonably high ion energy. This proposed program is designed to demonstrate the versatility of such programmable compact beams in fusion research and ultimate reactor applications. The same principles used to produce these energetic neutral beams are equally applicable to produce neutralized beams that have potential applications in inertial fusion to prevent charge buildup at the target.1
We will first describe our method of producing neutral beam sources based on the wave-acceleration process and the wave enhanced charge-transfer process. We will then describe how our beam sources can be tested in ECRH produced linear magnetized plasma equipped with ICRH and mirror confinement.
The overall objective is to demonstrate the viability and versatility of these compact neutral beams for fusion. Physics issues connected with profile and instability control and the simulation of alpha particles are topics that can be investigated.
