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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.
Glenn Gerdin, Donald Mueller, Bernard W. Wehring
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 7 | Number 2 | March 1985 | Pages 180-196
Technical Paper | Experimental Device | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A24533
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method is proposed to measure the properties of the alphas escaping a deuterium-tritium-fueled magnetically confined fusion reactor. This method is called the charge neutralization approach; it involves the slowing down of alphas in carbon foils of known thickness so that a significant percentage of the alphas are neutralized. These alphas can be detected by methods similar to those developed for charge-exchange neutral analysis. The foils would be placed in a recessed slot in the foil holder that would, in turn, be placed in the shadow of the limiter to reduce the heat and particle flux to the foils. Considerable energy selection can be achieved by varying the foil thickness; the lower limit on detectable alpha energy is ∼200 keV. The ratio of alpha signal to nuclear noise was estimated for a ZnS scintillator 15 μm thick being operated in the current mode in a borated limestone shield. Experimental values were used for the response to neutrons, and linear absorption coefficients were used for the response to gammas. The alpha wall flux was that calculated for a Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) with Q = 1, a plasma current of 2.5 MA, and a minor radius of 85 cm; the radiation fluxes were scaled from the one-dimensional calculations of L-P. Kufor TFTR at Q = 1. For this example, the signal to nuclear noise ratio becomes greater than unity at ∼75 cm into the shield indicating the amount of shielding material required.