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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Latest News
Lightbridge announces first U-Zr fuel rod samples extruded at INL
Lightbridge Corporation announced today that it has reached “a critical milestone” in the development of its extruded solid fuel technology. Coupon samples using an alloy of zirconium and depleted uranium—not the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that Lightbridge plans to use to manufacture its fuel for the commercial market—were extruded at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex.
M. L. Walker, D. A. Humphreys, R. D. Johnson, J. A. Leuer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 790-795
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Plasma Engineering, Heating, Current Drive, and Control | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A783
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The DIII-D tokamak is capable of supporting a wide variety of plasma equilibria because of its relatively large number of coils and their proximity to the plasma. To support its advanced tokamak mission, the DIII-D experimental program continues to push the envelope of this capability, frequently encountering limits imposed by allowable currents in poloidal shaping coils. Violation of current constraints is presently dealt with by operator adjustment of control targets and gains between plasma discharges. At the same time, demands for more precise and stable control have motivated efforts to develop and install advanced multivariable algorithms for control of plasma shape in DIII-D and other devices. There is currently no way to ensure respect of nonlinear current constraints in a multivariable linear controller design and no practical way to manually tune these fully coupled controllers between discharges after installation. Various linear minimization schemes can be implemented to encourage currents to remain within limits, but adherence to these limits cannot be guaranteed by linear methods alone. In this paper, we describe ongoing efforts to provide methods that guarantee currents will not exceed preset limits, and that simultaneously achieve the best obtainable quality of control subject to current limit constraints.