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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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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.
J. F. Latkowski, W. R. Meier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 2 | September 2003 | Pages 300-304
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A351
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Heavy Ion Fusion Virtual National Laboratory (HIF-VNL) recently initiated an effort to reach an updated, self-consistent, integrated point design for a thick-liquid inertial fusion energy power plant. We call this design the Robust Point Design. As part of this effort, the shielding design of the final focusing system has been evaluated, in an iterative fashion, with other elements of the design. The present work reports on the status of the shielding design from the perspectives of superconductor/insulator radiation lifetimes, recirculating power needed to counter nuclear heating, and neutron activation, which affects both system maintainability and waste management. Models used herein include the last three focusing magnets, and a full, three-dimensional model for the target chamber. Analyses have been performed for 9-by-9 beam arrays, with a total of 120 beams (60 per side). Results and directions for future work are presented.
