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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
July 2025
Latest News
The U.S. Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
David R. Mikkelsen, Clifford E. Singer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 237-252
Technical Paper | Special Section Content / Fusion Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22816
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Recent developments in neutral beam technology prompt us to reconsider the prospects for steady-state tokamak reactors. A mathematical reactor model is developed that includes the physics of beam-driven currents and reactor power balance, as well as reactor and beam system costs. This model is used to find the plasma temperatures that minimize the reactor cost per unit of net electrical output. The optimum plasma temperatures are nearly independent of ß and are roughly twice as high as the optimum temperatures for ignited reactors. If beams of neutral deuterium atoms with near-optimum energies of 1 to 2 MeV are used to drive the current in a reactor the size of the International Tokamak Reactor, then the optimum temperatures are typically Te ≃ 12 to 15 keV and Ti≃ 17 to 21 keV for a wide range of model parameters. Net electrical output rises rapidly with increasing deuterium beam energy for Eb ≾ 400 keV, but rises only slowly above Eb ∼ 1 MeV. We estimate that beam-driven steady-state reactors could be economically competitive with pulsed-ignition reactors if cyclic-loading problems limit the toroidal magnetic field strength of pulsed reactors to ≾85% of that allowed in steady-state reactors.