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
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
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.
V. Cocilovo et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 989-993
Plasma Engineering | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9039
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new facility for fusion , the Fusion Advanced Studies Torus ( FAST ), has been proposed to prepare ITER scenarios and to investigate non linear dynamics of energetic particles, relevant for the understanding of burning plasmas behavior, using fast ions accelerated by heating and current drive systems. This new facility is considered an important tool also for the successful development of the demonstration/prototype reactor (DEMO), because the DEMO scenarios can take valuable advantage by a preparatory activity on devices smaller than ITER with sufficient flexibility and capable plasma conditions, before to testing them on ITER itself.In the regimes proposed for FAST the magnetic Toroidal Field (TF) ripple could lead to significant losses of high-energy particles, as also demonstrated in JET and JT60U experiments, so a careful analysis is necessary to achieve a low value of the TF ripple as far as compatible with the general load assembly design issues.Two different approaches to reduce TF ripple had been considered: Ferromagnetic Insets and Active Coils. For both solutions, different geometric parameters were investigated and the relative benefits and drawbacks evaluated.The analysis was carried out by 2D and 3D electromagnetic F.E.M. codes, dealing with different design solutions, chosen between those compatible with the relevant geometric dimensions of the plasma (i.e. the vacuum vessel), the access to the plasma and the divertor needs (i.e. the vacuum vessel ports dimensions) and other design constrains.A magnet consisting of 18 coils, each made of 14 copper plates suitably worked out in order to realize 3 turns in radial direction has been proposed. To limit within acceptable value the TF magnet ripple, the ferromagnetic insets solution has been chosen for FAST.The ripple on the plasma separatrix (near the equatorial port), has been so reduced from 3% to 0.3% .Due to the good results obtained also with Active Coils a study for applying the Active Coils concept also in ITER design was made, confirming even in this case the possibility to reduce considerably the TF ripple.