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
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2024
Nuclear Technology
May 2024
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.
John Galambos, Y.-K. M. Peng, John Haines
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 1196-1202
Fusion Power Reactor, Economic, and Alternate Concept | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40314
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We find minimum sized Spherical Tokamak (ST) configurations capable of Q∼1 (scientific break-even) and ignition. For Q∼1 cases, we normalize our models to the JET device. We find comparable plasma power balance performance in an ST configuration of major radius ∼ 0.7 m, using both global and 3/2 D plasma transport modeling. For ignited plasma, we first normalize the plasma modeling to the ITER device. We find similar ignited plasma performance capabilities in an ST configuration of major radius 1.2 m. These are much smaller size plasmas than the standard tokamak counterparts, indicating a potentially easier path towards commercial applications. Also, we find that the quantity IA is not a good figure-of-merit for comparing performance of widely different tokamak configurations.
