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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
J. Guasp, F. Castejón, I. Pastor, R. F. Álvarez-Estrada
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 2 | August 2017 | Pages 99-119
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1320497
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The inverse problem for Thomson scattering (TS), that is, finding the electron distribution function (EDF), not restricted to be Maxwellian or isotropic, from the observation of the scattered spectrum, is addressed. Based on previous results by the authors, a new parallel FORTRAN code, INVERT, has been developed that allows to estimate the free parameters of a wide class of distribution functions by fitting experimental or numerical (synthetic) spectra using a variant of the simplex method. The application of these techniques to the extraction of non-Maxwellian or anisotropic features in the electron distribution function is analyzed in detail. The performance of the new code on noisy synthetic spectra and its capabilities to quantitatively discriminate among several competing EDFs modeling data are discussed. The issues of uniqueness (or nonuniqueness) of the inverse problem in case of multiparameter distribution functions are discussed. In such cases, the prospects of multiple diagnostics synthesis, or having several simultaneous scattering chords to remove the ambiguity in the reconstruction of the EDF, are also discussed. Some comments on the requirements of a TS system able to detect nonthermal or anisotropic effects are also included.