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
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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
May 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Zap Energy hits 37-million-degree electron temperatures in compact fusion device
Zap Energy announced April 23 that it has reached 1-3 keV plasma electron temperatures—roughly the equivalent of 11 to 37 million degrees Celsius—using its sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch approach to fusion. Reaching temperatures above that of the sun’s core (which is 10 million degrees Celsius temperature) is just one hurdle required before any fusion confinement concept can realistically pursue net gain and fusion energy.
C. M. Greenfield
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 2 | October 2005 | Pages 1178-1198
Technical Paper | DIII-D Tokamak - Advanced Tokamak Scenarios | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1070
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Research in DIII-D places a major emphasis on developing a scientific basis for high-performance steady-state operation for use in burning plasma tokamaks. This work has resulted in a long history of studies of high-performance regimes. Several of these regimes are described. H-mode, the first high-performance regime, is characterized by the formation of a transport barrier in the boundary region. The VH- and QH-modes, both variations of the H-mode, were both first identified through pioneering work on DIII-D. Although internal transport barriers (ITBs) had been observed previously, advanced diagnostics implemented on DIII-D and elsewhere allowed the physics of these phenomena to be elucidated. This work led to the combination of a VH-mode edge and an ITB core, which exhibits the highest fusion performance obtained in DIII-D. ITBs can also be combined with the QH-mode edge to produce the quiescent double barrier regime, characterized by nearly stationary high-performance plasmas. Like the ITB, high-li plasmas also exhibit performance improvements deeper in the core, in this case due to increased poloidal magnetic field. Although many of these regimes exhibit high-fusion performance only transiently, they provide important platforms for developing an understanding of the physics of transport and magnetohydrodynamic stability and provide the basis for extending to longer duration and evaluating compatibility with steady state.