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.
Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
April 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
A. Hassanein, J. P. Allain, Z. Insepov, I. Konkashbaev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 686-697
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Divertor and Plasma-Facing Components | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A765
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the critical technological challenges of future tokamak fusion devices is the ability for plasma-facing components to handle both normal and abnormal plasma/surface interaction events that compromise their lifetime and operation of the machine. Under normal operation plasma/surface interactions that are important include: sputtering, particle implantation and recycling, He pumping and ELM (edge localized modes)-induced erosion. In abnormal or off-normal operation: disruptions and vertical displacement events (VDEs) are important. To extend PFC lifetime under these conditions, liquid-metals have been considered as candidate PFCs (Plasma-Facing Components), including: liquid lithium, tin-lithium, gallium and tin.Liquid lithium has been measured to have nonlinear increase of physical sputtering with rise in temperature. Such increase can be a result of exposure to ELM-level particle fluxes. The significant increase in particle flux to the divertor and nearby PFCs can enhance sputtering erosion by an order of magnitude or more. In addition from the standpoint of hydrogen recycling and helium pumping liquid lithium appears to be a good candidate plasma-facing material (PFM). Advanced designs of first wall and divertor systems propose the application of liquid-metals as an alternate PFC to contend with high-heat flux constraints of large-scale tokamak devices. Additional issues include PFC operation under disruptions and long temporal instabilities such as VDEs. A comprehensive two-fluid model is developed to integrate core and SOL (scrape-off layer) parameters during ELMs with PFC surface evolution using the HEIGHTS package. Special emphasis is made on the application of lithium as a candidate plasma-facing liquid-metal.