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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
The newest era of workforce development at ANS
As most attendees of this year’s ANS Annual Conference left breakfast in the Grand Ballroom of the Chicago Downtown Marriott to sit in on presentations covering everything from career pathways in fusion to recently digitized archival nuclear films, 40 of them made their way to the hotel’s fifth floor to take part in the second offering of Nuclear 101, a newly designed certification course that seeks to give professionals who are in or adjacent to the industry an in-depth understanding of the essentials of nuclear energy and engineering from some of the field’s leading experts.
Jay F. Benesch, Roger D. Bengtson, George L. Cardwell, Stephen A. Eckstrand, Rex F. Gandy, Paul Wildi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 2 | Number 3 | July 1982 | Pages 398-409
Technical Paper | Special Section Contents / Experimental Devices | doi.org/10.13182/FST82-A20772
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The PRETEXT tokamak was designed to investigate the initial stages of a tokamak discharge. The machine has a major radius of 53 cm, limiter radius of 15 cm, and a toroidal field (TF) of 8 kG. Plasma currents of 40 to 60 kA with durations of 40 to 70 ms are typical. Chord average density is of the order of 1013 cm−3, the electron temperature Te(0) ∼ 300 eV, and the effective charge Zeff ∼ 3. The ohmic-heating (OH) transformer is unique among operating machines, having an iron core and air return. Combinations of mechanical and electronic switches in the OH and TF power supplies provide good reliability at low jitter and low cost. The design and construction of the PRETEXT tokamak are discussed in enough detail to give a feeling for the compromises that must be made and the problems that will be encountered in the building of any controlled thermonuclear reactor device.
