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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.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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!
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Latest News
Nuclear fuel cycle reimagined: Powering the next frontiers from nuclear waste
In the fall of 2023, a small Zeno Power team accomplished a major feat: they demonstrated the first strontium-90 heat source in decades—and the first-ever by a commercial company.
Zeno Power worked with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to fabricate and validate this Z1 heat source design at the lab’s Radiochemical Processing Laboratory. The Z1 demonstration heralded renewed interest in developing radioisotope power system (RPS) technology. In early 2025, the heat source was disassembled, and the Sr-90 was returned to the U.S. Department of Energy for continued use.
Oliver Schmitz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 2 | February 2012 | Pages 221-229
Edge Physics and Exhaust | Proceedings of the Tenth Carolus Magnus Summer School on Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13509
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Controlling the transport in the plasma edge of high temperature plasmas has recently been extended by a sophisticated option - the stochastization of the magnetic cage confining the plasma. The idea is to induce a chaotic magnetic field structure in the edge which can act as a magnetic valve to control heat and particle fluxes between the confined plasma and the plasma facing components. This tool is applied in both, stellarators as well as tokamaks. In this lecture an introduction into the topic will be given. The topics are (a) generation and structure of chaotic magnetic edge layers, (b) plasma transport with stochastic magnetic fields including the resulting three-dimensional plasma wall interaction and (c) impact of a plasma response. However, this field is matter of intense ongoing research and hence this lecture gives a systematic introduction into the challenges based on examples from the TEXTOR tokamak.