ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jan 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
January 2026
Nuclear Technology
December 2025
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
CFS working with NVIDIA, Siemens on SPARC digital twin
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a fusion firm headquartered in Devens, Mass., is collaborating with California-based computing infrastructure company NVIDIA and Germany-based technology conglomerate Siemens to develop a digital twin of its SPARC fusion machine. The cooperative work among the companies will focus on applying artificial intelligence and data- and project-management tools as the SPARC digital twin is developed.
E. W. Sucov, F. S. Malick, L. Green
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1084-1088
Blanket and First Wall Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23002
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fluidized bed concept for blankets of dry or wetted first wall ICF reactors using solid lithium compounds is described. The reaction chamber is a right cylinder, 32 m high and 20 m in diameter; the blanket is composed of 36 steel tanks, 32m high, which carry the sintered Li2O particles in the fluidizing helium gas. Each tank has a radial thickness of 2 m which generates a tritium breeding ratio (TBR) of 1.27 and absorbs over 98% of the neutron energy; reducing the thickness to 1.2 m produces a TBR of 1.2 and energy absorption of 97% which satisfy the design goals. Calculations of tritium diffusion through the grains and heat removal from the grains showed that neither could be removed by the carrier gas; tritium and heat are therefore removed by removing the grains continuously. The particles are continuously fed into the bottom of the tanks at 300°C and removed at the top at 475°C. Tritium and heat extraction are easily and conveniently done outside the reactor. Compared to blanket designs which use flowing liquid metals or packed beds of solid lithium compounds, this concept is safer, simpler, cheaper, easier to maintain and less likely to break down. In addition, this concept is compatible with both wetted wall and dry wall first wall designs. Finally, deleterious thermal expansion effects due to absorption of the neutron pulse in liquid lithium or the packed bed disappear because of the decoupling of the particles in the helium stream.