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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Zap Energy hits 37-million-degree electron temperatures in compact fusion device
Zap Energy announced April 23 that it has reached 1-3 keV plasma electron temperatures—roughly the equivalent of 11 to 37 million degrees Celsius—using its sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch approach to fusion. Reaching temperatures above that of the sun’s core (which is 10 million degrees Celsius temperature) is just one hurdle required before any fusion confinement concept can realistically pursue net gain and fusion energy.
Blaise Faugeras
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 69 | Number 2 | April 2016 | Pages 495-504
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-171
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper proposes a new fast and stable algorithm for the reconstruction of the plasma boundary from discrete magnetic measurements taken at several locations surrounding the vacuum vessel. The resolution of this inverse problem takes two steps. In the first one, we transform the set of measurements into Cauchy conditions on a fixed contour ΓO close to the measurement points. This is done by least-squares fitting a truncated series of toroidal harmonics functions to the measurements. The second step consists in solving a Cauchy problem for the elliptic equation satisfied by the flux in the vacuum and for the overdetermined boundary conditions on ΓO previously obtained with the help of toroidal harmonics. It is reformulated as an optimal control problem on a fixed annular domain of external boundary ΓO and fictitious inner boundary ΓI. A regularized Kohn-Vogelius cost function, which depends on the value of the flux on ΓI, measures the discrepancy between the solution to the equation satisfied by the flux obtained using Dirichlet conditions on ΓO and the one obtained using Neumann conditions. This function is minimized. The method presented here has led to the development of software, called VacTH-KV, which enables plasma boundary reconstruction in any tokamak.