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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
B. C. Stratton, M. Bitter, K. W. Hill, D. L. Hillis, J. T. Hogan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 2 | February 2008 | Pages 431-486
Technical Paper | Plasma Diagnostics for Magnetic Fusion Research | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1677
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Spectroscopy of radiation emitted by impurities and hydrogen isotopes plays an important role in the study of magnetically confined fusion plasmas, both in determining the effects of impurities on plasma behavior and in measurements of plasma parameters such as electron and ion temperatures and densities, particle transport, and particle influx rates. Spectroscopic diagnostics of plasma radiation that are excited by collisional processes in the plasma, which are termed passive spectroscopic diagnostics to distinguish them from active spectroscopic diagnostics involving injected particle and laser beams, are reviewed. A brief overview of the ionization balance in hot plasmas and the relevant line and continuum radiation excitation mechanisms is given. Instrumentation in the soft X-ray, vacuum ultraviolet, ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared regions of the spectrum is described and examples of measurements are given. Paths for further development of these measurements and issues for their implementation in a burning plasma environment are discussed.
