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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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October 2025
Latest News
Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
S. Okada, T. Masumoto, S. Yamamoto, M. Inomoto, K. Kitano, S. Yoshimura (20R14)
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 51 | Number 2 | February 2007 | Pages 193-196
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1348
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
There are continuing theoretical activities to understand experimentally observed unusual (not explained by the ideal MHD theory) stability of the Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) plasmas and the existence of the FRC-equilibria as a relaxed state. FRC plasma sustainment system based on high energy particles are proposed to exploit their possible good confinement. It is also proposed to realize pulsed fusion system with the particle density between continuous systems (~1020/m3) and inertial systems (~1031/m3); the magnetized target fusion (~1026/m3) and the pulsed high density systems (~1023/m3). With the aim of overcoming the limitation in producing large scale, continuous FRC plasma, theoretical and experimental studies are intensively carried out on the FRC plasma formation and/or sustainment by the rotating magnetic field (RMF). The technology of the translation made it possible to apply standard method of sustaining the plasma - the neutral beam injection and the wave - to the theta pinch produced FRC plasma. Except for the duration, this plasma has the best performance (density and temperature) and low frequency wave is successfully induced and propagated deep in the FRC plasma.
