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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Optimizing nuclear plant outages: Data analytics tools and methods for enhancing resilience and efficiency
Nuclear power plant refueling outages are among the most complex phases in a plant’s operational cycle.1 During these outages, tens of thousands of activities, including maintenance and surveillance, are conducted simultaneously within a short timeframe. Typically lasting three to four weeks, these operations involve large crews of contractors with diverse skill sets performing tasks ranging from testing and surveillance to maintenance. Outages may extend longer if major backfitting or modernization projects are planned. Consequently, plant outages are expensive, incurring significant operational costs, such as contractor labor and equipment, as well as the loss of generation while the plant is off line. This can easily cost a plant operator more than $1 million a day. Therefore, there is a constant need to mitigate the economic impact on plants by reducing the frequency, duration, and risks associated with these outages.2,3
B. F. Picologlou, Y. S. Cha, S. Majumdar
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 848-853
Liquid-Metal Blankets and Magnetohydrodynamic Effects | Proceedings of the Seveth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Reno, Nevada, June 15–19, 1986) | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24843
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The reactors considered in the Tokamak Power Systems Studies (TPSS), with their reduced toroidal magnetic flux densities, increased aspect ratios, and moderate overall power outputs afford the possibility of significant improvements and simplification in the design of liquid-metal self-cooled blankets. In designing the first wall and blanket structural, thermal, and magnetohydrodynamic constraints must be satisfied simultaneously. A systematic approach to do so efficiently, and resulting design parameters are presented. Designs with separate limiters can achieve a neutron wall loading capability of about 5 MW/m2 with bare structural walls near the first wall and insulated laminated construction in regions of low fluence only. When laminated wall construction is used in the first wall coolant channels, the neutron wall loading capability exceeds 10 MW/m2.
