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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver 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
INL’s new innovation incubator could link start-ups with an industry sponsor
Idaho National Laboratory is looking for a sponsor to invest $5 million–$10 million in a privately funded innovation incubator to support seed-stage start-ups working in nuclear energy, integrated energy systems, cybersecurity, or advanced materials. For their investment, the sponsor gets access to what INL calls “a turnkey source of cutting-edge American innovation.” Not only are technologies supported by the program “substantially de-risked” by going through technical review and development at a national laboratory, but the arrangement “adds credibility, goodwill, and visibility to the private sector sponsor’s investments,” according to INL.
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.