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
Latest Magazine Issues
Apr 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2026
Nuclear Technology
March 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
R.E. Potok, H. Becker, L. Bromberg, D.R. Cohn, N. Diatchenko, P .B. Roemer, J.E.C. Williams
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 1314-1319
Alternate Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A23038
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present an analytical and numerical analysis of a tokamak reactor with a set of helical coils added in order to eliminate plasma disruptions. The optimal helical configuration was found to be a set of continuous, = 2 stellarator coils which are made of copper and are internal to the toroidal field coils, being the number of poloidal field periods. (The optimization process did not include evaluation of the viability of a modular stellarator reactor). Scaling laws were developed for this optimal configuration, and a series of parametric scans are performed with varying assumptions for the forces on the helical coils and the ratio of helical coil transform to plasma transform (M*). The option space available for attractive reactor designs is strongly constrained and involves large forces on the helical coils, low q plasma operation (q being the plasma safety factor), and moderately low M* (3 to 5). Numerical calculations showed that M* must be > 3 in order to obtain well defined flux surfaces. This is in agreement with results from the JIPP-TII tokamak.