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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
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
N. Pomphrey, A. Boozer, A. Brooks, R. Hatcher, S. P. Hirshman, S. Hudson, L. P. Ku, E. A. Lazarus, H. Mynick, D. Monticello, M. Redi, A. Reiman, M. C. Zarnstorff, I. Zatz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 51 | Number 2 | February 2007 | Pages 181-202
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1298
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) will study the physics of low-aspect ratio, high-, quasi-axisymmetric stellarators. To achieve the scientific goals of the NCSX mission, the device must be capable of supporting a wide range of variations in plasma configuration about a reference baseline equilibrium. We demonstrate the flexibility of NCSX coils to support such configuration variations and demonstrate the robustness of performance of NCSX plasmas about reference design values of the plasma current Ip, , and profile shapes. The robustness and flexibility calculations make use of free-boundary plasma equilibrium constructions using a combination of nonaxisymmetric modular coils and axisymmetric toroidal and poloidal field coils. The primary computational tool for the studies is STELLOPT, a free-boundary optimization code that varies coil currents to target configurations with specific physics properties.