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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
A more open future for nuclear research
A growing number of institutional, national, and funder mandates are requiring researchers to make their published work immediately publicly accessible, through either open repositories or open access (OA) publications. In addition, both private and public funders are developing policies, such as those from the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the European Commission, that ask researchers to make publicly available at the time of publication as much of their underlying data and other materials as possible. These, combined with movement in the scientific community toward embracing open science principles (seen, for example, in the dramatic rise of preprint servers like arXiv), demonstrate a need for a different kind of publishing outlet.
M. Inutake, A. Ando, K. Hattori, T. Yagai, H. Tobari, Y. Kumagai, H. Miyazaki, S. Fujimura
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 1 | January 2003 | Pages 118-124
Propulsion | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A11963577
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A supersonic plasma is produced quasi-steadily by use of a magneto-plasma-dynamic arcjet (MPDA) in various shapes of an external magnetic field configuration. An ion acoustic Mach number Mi of the plasma flow is limited to be nearly unity in a uniform magnetic field configuration, while it increases up to almost 3 in a divergent magnetic nozzle configuration. Spatial variations of Mi is well predicted by an isentropic model for a compressible gas. The Mach number decreases in the far downstream region due to charge-exchange collisions between flowing ions and neutral atoms which are produced through surface-recombination on the end wall. Ion heating of the fast flowing plasma has been successfully demonstrated for the first time. This success is mainly due to the plasma density is high enough to reduce the penetration of neutral gases which cause the charge-exchange energy loss. It is found that an asymmetric RF wave with an azimuthal mode number m= ± 1 is most effective to heat the ions.
