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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
Koichi Maki, Takashi Okazaki
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 3 | November 1983 | Pages 468-478
Technical Papers | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22796
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Effects of blanket composition, including materials and their thicknesses, on the tritium breeding ratio in tokamak fusion reactors are investigated for the Li20 blanket having a separable first wall. The sensitivities of the breeding ratio to the thicknesses of the materials for the first wall are estimated as follows (unit: TBR/cm): Ssic= −.05, Scu= −.13, SAl= −.04, Sss= −.03, SHe= 0.0, SD2o= −.02, SH2o= −.09. From these results, aluminum and stainless steel are seen as suitable for such first-wall structural materials as cooling tubes, and heavy water is appropriate for the coolant of the first wall. The lead multiplier of 5-cm thickness is used along with Li20, without 6Li enrichment, as the tritium breeding material. The tritium breeding ratio of the blanket is estimated as 1.08.
