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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
C.B. Baxi, M.A. Ulrickson, D.E. Driemeyer, P. Heitzcnroeder
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 408-411
Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963269
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Fusion Ignition Research Experiment (FIRE) is being designed as a next step in the U.S. magnetic fusion program. The FIRE tokamak has a major radius of 2 m, a minor radius of 0.525 m, and liquid nitrogen cooled copper coils. The aim is to produce a pulse length of 20 s with a plasma current of 6.6 MA and with alpha dominated heating.
The outer divertor and baffle of FIRE are water cooled. The worst thermal condition for the outer divertor and baffle is the baseline D-T operating mode (10 T, 6.6 MA, 20 s) with a plasma exhaust power of 67 MW and a peak heat flux of 20 MW/m2. A swirl tape (ST) heat transfer enhancement method is used in the outer divertor cooling channels to increase the heat transfer coefficient and the critical heat flux (CHF). The plasma-facing surface consists of tungsten brush.
The finite element (FE) analysis shows that for an inlet water temperature of 30°C, inlet pressure of 1.5 MPa and a flow velocity of 10 m/s, the incident critical heat flux is greater than 30 MW/m2. The peak copper temperature is 490°C, peak tungsten temperature is 1560°C, and the pressure drop is less than 0.5 MPa. All these results fulfill the design requirements.