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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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
Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
W. K. Terry, Jeffrey N. Brooks, Charles D. Boley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 7 | Number 2 | March 1985 | Pages 158-170
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A24531
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several important issues related to impurity control in tokamak reactors were studied with a version of the plasma transport code WHIST. These issues are burn control feasibility by impurity injection and enhanced ripple transport, the effect on the plasma of limiter sputtered impurities, and the effect of operating with a self-pumped helium removal system. It was found that the plasma operating point and the mix between radiated power and power transported to the limiter can be controlled by varying the amount of impurities injected, the ripple transport, and the pumping fraction. It was also found that a self-pumped impurity control scheme that removes helium but not hydrogen results in acceptable plasma profiles. Finally, the effects of sputtered impurities depend greatly on whether or not neoclassical impurity transport is assumed, with the nonneoclassical case giving more favorable results.
