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Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
NRC engineers share their expertise at the University of Puerto Rico
Robert Roche-Rivera and Marcos Rolón-Acevedo are licensed professional engineers who work at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They are also alumni of the University of Puerto Rico–Mayagüez (UPRM) and have been sharing their knowledge and experience with students at their alma mater since last year, serving as adjunct professors in the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. During the 2023–2024 school year, they each taught two courses: Fundamentals of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and Nuclear Power Plant Engineering.
T. Looby, M. Reinke, A. Wingen, J. Menard, S. Gerhardt, T. Gray, D. Donovan, E. Unterberg, J. Klabacha, M. Messineo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 1 | January 2022 | Pages 10-27
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1951532
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The engineering limits of plasma-facing components (PFCs) constrain the allowable operational space of tokamaks. Poorly managed heat fluxes that push the PFCs beyond their limits not only degrade core plasma performance via elevated impurities, but can also result in PFC failure due to thermal stresses or melting. Simple axisymmetric assumptions fail to capture the complex interaction between three-dimensional (3-D) PFC geometry and two-dimensional or 3-D plasmas. This results in fusion systems that must either operate with increased risk or reduce PFC loads, potentially through lower core plasma performance, to maintain a nominal safety factor. High-precision 3-D heat flux predictions are necessary to accurately ascertain the state of a PFC given the evolution of the magnetic equilibrium. A new code, the Heat flux Engineering Analysis Toolkit (HEAT), has been developed to provide high-precision 3-D predictions and analysis for PFCs. HEAT couples many otherwise disparate computational tools together into a single open-source python package. Magnetic equilibrium, engineering computer-aided design, finite volume solvers, scrape-off layer plasma physics, visualization, high-performance computing, and more, are connected in a single web-based user interface. Linux users may use HEAT without any software prerequisites via an appImage. This paper introduces HEAT, discusses the software architecture, presents the first HEAT results, and outlines physics modules in development.