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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
A. Collazos, V. S. Udintsev, R. Chavan, F. Felici, F. Dolizy, M. A. Henderson, H. Shidara
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 1 | January 2009 | Pages 84-93
Technical Paper | Electron Cyclotron Emission and Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A4056
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The aim of the ITER electron cyclotron heating and current drive upper launcher (UL) is to control magnetohydrodynamic activity in the plasma, in particular neoclassical tearing modes, requiring a narrow and peaked deposition of the radio-frequency (rf) power.The millimeter-wave (mm-wave) system of the UL is optimized to ensure that the eight rf beams are all focused to a small beam width at the resonance location. The present design uses two mitre bends per beam and a focusing mirror for each set of four beams, orientating each set onto a single steering mirror (SM) to inject it into the plasma. The SM is rotated using a frictionless and backlash free pneumo-mechanical system. A first prototype of the SM has been constructed to demonstrate the manufacturability and the actuation principle and to develop an adequate control strategy.A test program has been developed to ensure the integrity of the launcher from the pre-build-to-print design phase (research and development) up to the tests after maintenance.This paper presents a general overview of the system, a description of the progress in the mm-wave optical layout, low-power tests, alignment specifications of the mm-wave components, and SM capabilities to meet the ITER requirements.
