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
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Two steps forward for U.K. advanced nuclear
This week, two significant announcements have emerged from the United Kingdom’s advanced reactor sector.
On June 14, Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they had signed two trilateral memorandums of cooperation to collaborate on “advanced modular reactor (AMR) technology, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), and the coated particle fuel these reactors will use.”
Separately, on June 16, Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower announced that its Natrium reactor design has been formally submitted for U.K. regulatory review. The company also announced the formation of a new subsidiary, TerraPower UK Ltd.
V. A. Soukhanovskii, W. R. Blanchard, J. K. Dong, R. Kaita, H. W. Kugel, J. E. Menard, T. J. Provost, R. Raman, A. L. Roquemore, P. Sichta
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 1 | January 2019 | Pages 1-17
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1502034
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A supersonic gas injector (SGI) has been developed for fueling and diagnostic applications on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). It is comprised of a graphite converging-diverging Laval nozzle and a commercial piezoelectric gas valve mounted on a movable probe at a low-field-side midplane port location. Also mounted on the probe is a diagnostic package: a Langmuir probe, two thermocouples, and five pick-up coils for measuring toroidal, radial, vertical magnetic field components and magnetic fluctuations at the location of the SGI tip. The SGI flow rate is up to 33.25 Pa m3/ (1.75 × 1022 euterium particles/s), comparable to conventional NSTX gas injectors. The nozzle operates in a pulsed regime at room temperature and a reservoir gas pressure up to 665 kPa (5000 Torr). The deuterium jet Mach number of about 4 and the divergence half-angle of 5 to 25 deg have been measured in laboratory experiments simulating the NSTX environment. Reliable operation of the SGI and all mounted diagnostics at distances 0.01 to 0.20 m from the plasma separatrix has been demonstrated in NSTX experiments. The SGI has been used for fueling of ohmic and 2- to 4-MW neutral beam injection–heated L- and H-mode plasmas. Fueling efficiency in the range 0.1 to 0.3 has been obtained from the plasma electron inventory analysis. The SGI-fueling–based plasma discharge scenarios enabling better density control have been developed.