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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
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The newest era of workforce development at ANS
As most attendees of this year’s ANS Annual Conference left breakfast in the Grand Ballroom of the Chicago Downtown Marriott to sit in on presentations covering everything from career pathways in fusion to recently digitized archival nuclear films, 40 of them made their way to the hotel’s fifth floor to take part in the second offering of Nuclear 101, a newly designed certification course that seeks to give professionals who are in or adjacent to the industry an in-depth understanding of the essentials of nuclear energy and engineering from some of the field’s leading experts.
S. J. Piet, M. S. Kazimi, L. M. Lidsky
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 5 | Number 3 | May 1984 | Pages 382-392
Technical Paper | Safety/Environmental Aspects | doi.org/10.13182/FST84-A23113
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Seven potential safety concerns for deuteriumtritium fusion reactors were examined and the influence of blanket material choice determined. This influence was quantified in terms of relative consequence indices (RCIs) according to prescribed consequence criteria. Selected combinations of structural material (Type 316 stainless steel, HT-9, vanadium alloy, or TZM), primary coolant (pressurized water, helium, lithium, or flibe), and tritium breeder (LiAlO2, lithium, or Li17Pb83) were examined. The analyses and indices were structured to focus on the specific material properties that influence the results, which allows for comparison of materials not included in the present study. The safety concerns that were found to be relatively insensitive (differing by less than an order of magnitude) to material choice are the rate of temperature increase from continued plasma heating following loss of coolant and electromagnetic effects of plasma disruptions. The range of the RCIs was about an order of magnitude for problems concerning after-heat removal, corrosion, and the thermal effects of disruptions. The following problems were found to range in severity over several orders of magnitude according to material choice: potential public health effects from radioactivity release, rapid structural oxidation, blanket chemical combustion, and coolant pressurization.
