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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
Meeting Spotlight
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
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
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Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Jie Li, Jie Zhang, Yang Qiu, Liangliang Zhang, Changle Liu, Xiang Gao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 1 | January 2020 | Pages 70-77
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1610320
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The breeding material ratio (BMR) makes a significant impact on the tritium breeding ratio (TBR) to the fusion blanket due to the material fraction influence inside the blanket interior. The qualitative study on the BMR-related TBR issues are focused on the two cases of water-cooled blanket modules: the mixture blanket structure and the multilayer blanket case. The study indicates that TBR is a unique value in accordance with one BMR value in the mixture blanket. Moreover, a systematic scheme on TBR estimation based on multiple variable combinations is carried out for the multilayer model. It is found that the blanket local TBR would vary along with BMR increasing, and that high TBRs are obtained at BMR in the range of 0.08 to 0.12 for the two cases. In particular, the maximum TBR occurs when the BMR is in the range of 0.09 to 0.1. Furthermore, TBR variation due to BMR change induced by blanket macrofactors, like material type, material ratio, material structure, etc., is defined using the universal function solution. These results would be more important to the breeding blanket design and optimization since they would affect the blanket structure concepts and their TBR estimations. Hence, the blanket BMR issues are important concerns on the road toward an advanced blanket system for the Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) at the present pre-engineering stages.
